


take yourself home

by shinsxoh



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, M/M, Marriage, Slow Burn, Split-Timelines, This might break ur heart, college sweethearts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23652274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinsxoh/pseuds/shinsxoh
Summary: Hoseok has loved Hyunwoo since the moment they met. Loved him through sickness, through anger, through fear and through fate. Held him tight on their wedding day and washed away his pain with every gentle embrace.Hoseok thinks he'll love Hyunwoo until the day he dies.But one day,thatday, the day everything changed, Hyunwoo wakes up in a quiet hospital and his heart monitor beeps by his side.He doesn't remember Hoseok's name.Suddenly, it's as if they never fell in love at all.
Relationships: Lee Hoseok | Wonho/Son Hyunwoo | Shownu
Comments: 22
Kudos: 66





	take yourself home

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to sad showho land lads
> 
> writing this made me sad so um be prepared i'm not easily moved by my own sad writing  
> it has a nice ending tho kinda stick with me on that one  
> got a little bit of wonkyun in there for my regular readers. also written similar to the style of 'boy' since ppl like that and I enjoy writing this way heh  
> title from the new troye sivan song. listen to it when reading if u want uwu
> 
> pls support mxs upcoming comeback and remember to follow wonho on all his new social media !! enjoy <3

The hospital was a quiet place.

Not silent by any means. The heart monitor maintained its sickening beat beneath the echoing sound of distant footsteps. Somebody coughed in the next room over. The sharp sound of a curtain being pulled aside cut through the melancholic air.

But there was something quiet about the hospital Hoseok sat in. Something that removed all sense of reality from a terrible situation. It coated his lungs in wax and filled his chest with fog while he stared at the man on the bed by his side.

Hyunwoo.

Hoseok loved Hyunwoo. Loved him with his everything. More, even, then Romeo loved Juliet, or Jack loved Rose, or any other tragic romance which Hoseok cried over on their sofa most nights snuggled into his husband's arms.

Hoseok had felt the world end in a heartbeat when he saw the car speed past. A blur of silver and black, the inhuman screech of tires against concrete. The horrible, terrible sight of his husband sprawled by the white lines of the road, unconscious and bleeding.

That was three days ago.

Hyunwoo had been asleep for three days. Hoseok had never left his side, waiting, watching, monitoring every move the nurses made. He’d been given a blanket to sleep with and a glass of water every hour. He hadn’t eaten much. He wasn’t hungry.

Medically induced coma, they said. It was used to help stabilise his brain after the blunt trauma had caused such dangerous swelling. Luckily, the car had not been going fast. It had not hit him directly. He had not been crushed under wheels or flung fifty feet in the air.

But he had hit his head on the concrete ground and there had been so, so much blood.

Remnants of the accident echoed in a grotesque scab from his hairline to right eyebrow. A deep graze that bruised a sickly yellow and brown and green, weeping dirty colours into the beautiful pallor of his husband's skin. Hoseok had washed the scab with a handkerchief and made sure to turn his neck so he wouldn’t wake with backaches like he sometimes did, as gentle as the clouds that brushed the sky far above.

“He should be waking up soon.”

The tender voice snapped Hoseok out of his drowsy state. The nurse’s gaze was filled with pity at his dishevelled appearance, but he didn’t care, he couldn’t care.

Hyunwoo would be waking up soon.

Relief flooded his limbs; a tsunami of concern rising up and up until only his head was above surface.

“How soon is soon?” he asked.

“A few minutes to an hour. We’ve ceased his dosage of Propofol completely,” the nurse explained. “When he does gain consciousness, press that button there. We’ll come check on him.”

“Okay,” Hoseok breathed.

It was as unconvincing as Hoseok felt.

“He’s fine, Mr Sohn-Lee,” the nurse said softly. “We just had to control the swelling. Right now, he’s the luckiest man alive.”

It was then it happened. A soft groan drifted across the air and, heart heavy with realisation, Hoseok turned to see his waking husband.

“Hyunwoo?” he whispered.

The beautiful man caught his gaze.

The nurse hurried off in a flurry of her blue gown. Her words remained where she had left; “Doctor Choi! Patient Sohn-Lee is responsive and conscious-”

Hoseok watched with shining eyes as Hyunwoo’s blank face scrunched beneath the harsh lighting. Dreary eyes crusted with the dust of sleep blinked slowly as a newborn child might. He scrambled to take Hyunwoo’s hand as he finally gained consciousness, waiting with bated breath as his husband’s pupils fixed and dilated in focus, like a baby dear who had yet to understand the horrors of the world he had appeared in, who knew not of terror but only contentment and confusion.

“Oh, Hyunwoo,” Hoseok breathed at the sight of his lover's face. Even with the bruise of his forehead and the drip in his arm, he was the most beautiful man alive. Their wedding rings clinked together as he gripped his hand tighter. “You’re okay, alright? Don’t panic. Just had a silly accident, that's all.”

Hyunwoo looked at him.

“How are you feeling?” Hoseok leaned towards his husband. The nurse returned in a flurry to check his vitals and the doctor's footsteps echoed like the rumble of thunder down the hall. “I can go get you some water- the nurse is here and the doctor is just coming so don’t worry about that.”

Hyunwoo blinked. A flickering gaze took in their entwined hands and the hospital around him. No recognition sparked in his chocolate eyes. They were dark and swam with little droplets of fear.

“Hyunwoo?” Hoseok asked, again, doubt colouring his tone. Was his husband okay? Was this confusion normal?

Eventually, Hyunwoo landed his gaze right on Hoseok’s face and spoke.

“Who are you?”

_Hyunwoo was perfect the moment Hoseok met him._

_Stumbling into the lecture as a new student late to his first day. His hair was swept to one side and face puffy with sleep and spicy food. His white shirt was tight on a soft large frame. His backpack scruffy and hung with a football team keyring._

_He bowed to the professor when he entered and scrambled to find a seat._

_The seat next to Hoseok on the aisle by the stairs._

_His thighs were so soft, when he sat down they touched Hoseok’s._

_Just as Hoseok had sucked in a flustered breath and turned to face the professor, he jumped as his arm was doused in cold juice that smelt like strawberries and rainwater._

_“Oh shit-” the boy next to him had said, ears turning bright red as he scrambled to mop up his water-bottle spillage with empty notepaper. “I’m so sorry, really. I’m so sorry-”_

_Hoseok watched him with sparkling eyes. The roundness of his nose was so cute. The pucker of his lips pulling at chubby cheeks enamoured him. Eyebrows that folded his eyes up with worry and fear as if he had never been more embarrassed in his life._

_“Hey.” Hoseok said. The boy had looked up at him, eyes wide, when he had put his hand on his arm. “It’s fine. I wasn’t writing anything important. I’m Hoseok.”_

_The boy noticeably swallowed. He glanced at Hoseok’s hand on his arm, and then sat back down quickly._

_“Hyunwoo,” he said._

_“You alright, Hyunwoo?” Hoseok smiled, but it was shy. Tentative. How could one person be so endearing? Never in his life had he believed he had butterflies in his stomach, but at that moment they were fluttering all the way up to his lungs._

_“Can I be honest with you?” Hyunwoo looked down at the stained desk, his wet hands and dishevelled appearance, before meeting Hoseok’s gaze. “No.”_

_There was a glint in his eyes and it made Hoseok laugh._

_No, not laugh. Giggle. Hyunwoo would always tell him it was a giggle._

_Hyunwoo smiled. A shy expression. One of complete, hesitant happiness. Crinkled eyes and bunny teeth. A fold of soft skin around his chin._

_Hoseok’s cheeks felt hot when he turned back to the professor._

_Hyunwoo had always been perfect._

Acute Retrograde Amnesia.

That was the name of the demon locked inside Hyunwoo’s head.

The inability to recall information before a particular event, accident or onset of disease. Usually incurable, but some connections can be made to the patient's former life through therapy.

Acute Retrograde Amnesia.

Even the words sounded ugly in his head.

“We are terribly sorry, Mr Sohn-Lee. There is no surgical cure for such a thing.”

The nurses' voices were distant in the hospital corridor. A few metres away, behind a drawn curtain and the murmur of caregivers, lay his husband, alone and hurting. Trapped in his own mind. Unable to even recognise Hoseok - his lover, his best friend -

“We shall keep him for a few more days, but he will need to be discharged as soon as the swelling has receded. We will give you all the resources you need to cope, and refer you to multiple specialists outside of our institution.”

“Can I talk to him?” Hoseok murmured.

The nurse shared a glance with the doctor. Hoseok shifted on his feet and scratched at his forearm.

“It might help,” the doctor suggested.

Might.

They had no idea, Hoseok thought with fear. They did not know what they were dealing with. Hyunwoo - his Hyunwoo had been hurt and they couldn’t help.

As he pulled back the curtains of his husband's bed with an affirmative nod from the doctor, Hoseok felt all the air in his lungs escape and leave him breathless.

It was not a nice kind of breathless. It hurt.

“Hey, Hyunwoo,”

Despite everything he was still the most handsome man alive. Sickly pallor, dirty under-eye bags, a scab crumbling above his eyebrow and his hair unwashed and greasy. He was still beautiful.

“Hello,” Hyunwoo said. It was guarded. His eyes flickered between Hoseok standing a few feet away and the doctor behind him, searching for something, although for what he could not guess.

“I.. I’m Hoseok. Your husband.”

Hyunwoo didn’t say anything. His eyes were piercing. Cutting deep into Hoseok’s soul.

“Do you.. Remember me?” Hoseok asked. Their gazes caught, deep, familiar. But it wasn’t like how it used to be. There was no spark, no embarrassed blush or red-tipped ears. Hyunwoo looked at him with wide, innocent, fearful eyes, and when Hoseok reached out to touch his hand he pulled back in shock.

“No,” he said. Intonation was foreign to his sharp-tipped words but there was a hesitant nervousness in his deer-like eyes. “I don’t remember anything. Who are these people? Who am I?”

“You’re Hyunwoo,” Hoseok said.

“You’re crying,” the other deadpanned.

Sure enough, when Hoseok dabbed his fingertips against the worn skin of his face, they came away hot with salty tears.

“I’m confused.” Hyunwoo frowned. A faint beep grew louder as the monitor spiked with his suddenly racing heart rate. “Why am I in the hospital? Who- who are you? I’m so confused-”

“You’re Son Hyunwoo, my husband. We’ve been married two years and we live in a small apartment in Seoul-”

“Don’t touch me!”

Hoseok had not realised he had reached out again, to take Hyunwoo’s arm, to comfort him in such a time. It was habit. It was all he knew.

Hoseok had no time to process the situation before he was being shoved out the way. Stood alone behind a wall of doctors attempting to calm their patients' heart.

“You have to calm down- the swelling in your brain cannot rupture-”

“Nurse Park, can we get some sedative? Patient is distressed-”

A panicked face flashed in front of Hoseok’s gaze. He saw Hyunwoo struggling on the bed, face painted in fear, body jerking as if the IV in his wrist fed electricity directly into his heart. And yet his eyes were innocent. His fear rational. He didn’t know where he was or who he was. He was in pain.

And Hoseok stood by silently. Mouth open and cheeks hot with tears which tasted salty on his tongue. Underwater. That’s what it felt like, the muffled voices, the sound of his own blood running through his ears, the blurry lights and slow movements. It felt like being underwater. The wave of concern had turned to dread, and he feared he was drowning.

Somehow Hoseok found himself in the hallway. Stunned and caught up in a web of disbelief. It refused to let him down, the spider of denial had him wrapped tightly in its clutches.

Hyunwoo didn’t know who he was.

Hyunwoo didn’t love him.

_“I have a crush on a guy”_

_The words were loud in the quiet dorm room. Hoseok’s roommate - Hyungwon, a tall, pretty boy who used to play lacrosse and tied his ash-blonde hair in a bun on his head - looked up from his book, unamused._

_“You have a crush on every guy,” he said._

_Hoseok sighed dramatically and turned to hug his pillow. “Yes, but this one is Perfect. I’m going to marry him.”_

_There was a snort. “Goodluck.”_

_A knock sounded on the door not that long later. Odd, at the late time, but not unheard of in a rowdy first-year university dorm._

_Hoseok opened it, dressed in checkered shorts and a plain tee._

_Hyunwoo was there._

_The recognition in the others' face was instant. It coloured his ears a starling red and his deer-like eyes were stuck in headlights._

_“Hey! We’re from down the hall!” A boy peered around the doorframe - big and round, like Hyunwoo. Another football player. “We’re going out tonight. Freshers night downtown. Wanna come? Hall hangout?”_

_“Sure,” Hoseok breathed. Briefly, he caught the startled gaze of Hyunwoo, who gave a small shy smile amongst his red face and shifted awkwardly on his feet._

_They had all walked as a hoard of students to the nearest bar where the event was. It wasn’t particularly cold that night, and Hoseok was content with following his roommate into whatever conversation the other wished to join._

_Hyungwon was not a permanent person. He flitted between people, friendships, lovers and days like a fairy not ready to touch ground. He was never attached to another. Never tied down. Always himself, always free. Hoseok didn’t think their friendship would last - Hyungwon would move on and that would be that, but somehow he didn’t mind. The other would always have a place in his heart._

_Hoseok was not like Hyungwon. He was a person of home, of stability, of comfort. He needed a rock in tumultuous waters. Needed weights on his ankles to keep him grounded. Needed strong arms to keep him safe at night._

_He liked to give away his heart and didn’t mind if he didn’t get it back. He just wanted somebody to love him like he loved others. One day he’d find that person. One day._

_Somehow, he found himself outside the bar later that night, sat on the cold concrete ground with the nighttime air seeping into his blotchy skin._

_“Hey.”_

_Hoseok jumped and looked up._

_Hyunwoo. Hovering awkwardly by the entrance as if afraid to approach Hoseok any further with his hands shoved in his pockets and gaze fixed on the ground._

_Adorable._

_“Oh.” Hoseok breathed. Hot air billowed from his mouth. The condensation on Hyunwoos bottle of water glittered in the moonlight. “Hey.”_

_“Not a party person?” Hyunwoo asked._

_Hoseok shook his head with a smile. The world spun briefly - he’d always been a lightweight._

_There was a shuffle and then a shadow stretched out a hand. “Here. Drink some water.”_

_Hoseok’s cheeks grew hot. He took a sip. “Thanks.”_

_“Look, I, um-” Hyunwoo glanced down nervously and he wrung his hands together. “I don’t think my friends will be done until much later. I don’t want you walking back to the dorms alone.”_

_“Then walk me back.”_

_Hyunwoo looked up._

_Their eyes met for a moment. Just a second of contact but it was enough to light a thousand sparks between them. Brilliant fireworks that exploded in the muffled, damp outside of a student bar on a dingy Tuesday afternoon._

_Was this love at first sight? Hoseok had hoped so. He was a sucker for romance._

_Hyunwoo didn’t talk much on the way back but, somehow, Hoseok didn’t mind. It was enough just to experience the presence of the soft, shy man. To bask in his handsomeness and try not to giggle at the red tips of his ears._

_“Thank you for walking me back,” Hoseok smiled when they reached his dorm - but the room was spinning just a little, and the words came out hitched with spindly laughter as he fumbled his glasses onto his face._

_“I like your giggle.”_

_Hyunwoo blushed immediately and he backed away. The words had slipped from his mouth accidentally, it seemed.._

_“Oh,“ Hoseok breathed. His glasses fogged up at the exhale._

_Hyunwoo scratched his head. Awkward limbs began to shuffle out the door. “Yeah. Anyway. Sleep well Hoseok-” A sharp crash echoed as he knocked a vase in the hallway. “Oh, shit. Fuck-”_

_“Goodnight Hyunwoo,” Hoseok said._

_The other shot a quick embarrassed smile and scurried away._

_A warm feeling had blossomed in Hoseok’s gut as he hugged his pillow tight that night, giggling over and over again. Love at first sight was definitely a thing, he told himself with a smile. Hyungwon didn’t know what he was missing out on._

Hyunwoo looked out of place in their apartment. A flat, emotionless magazine cut-out pasted crudely on the cosy home they called their own.

Two weeks had passed since he had regained consciousness. Two weeks since Hoseok’s husband had woken up and not been able to remember his name. Two weeks since his life had changed forever.

It didn’t feel like two weeks. It felt like two years.

A garish plastic medicinal pack hung from one of his hands - filled with booklets, leaflets, a schedule of therapy appointments and hospital check-ins. The plastic band with a patient number wrapped tight around Hyunwoo’s waist, a reminder of his stay.

Hoseok stood forwards slightly, teetering on the balls of his feet like a bird about to take flight, wringing his hands again and again as if he could wash the past week from his hands.

“Do you... recognise any of this?” Hoseok asked quietly.

Hyunwoo blinked. Blank eyes took in the room around them. The low-lit, Morrocan lamps that glowed with warm orange and mountain reds, the wide sofa with two soft cushion dips where they usually sat, the geographical book on the coffee table they joked about never reading.

For a moment Hyunwoo seemed just as he always had. Golden skin framed by the house he called his own and floral wallpaper - which he hated but pretended to love because Hoseok loved - bringing out the pinkish tips of his ears.

Hoseok wished beyond anything that Hyunwoo would love him in that moment more than he ever had. That the clumsy, kind, selfless man would drop his medicinal bag and run to take Hoseok in his arms. Would cradle him as he did on their wedding day. Would lose his eyes in the uneven crescent moon of his laughter while he peppered Hoseok’s face with kisses as he apologised for such a cruel, cruel joke.

Instead, Hyunwoo shook his head.

“No,” he said.

Hoseok let out a slow breath.

No.

The word rang a thousand times in a single second like the bells of a falling city. There was no intonation, no rise and fall of a hurried speech or shy stutter Hoseok was used to.

Just... no. Hyunwoo did not remember.

What had the doctor said? Bring out things that mean a lot to him, spark a memory pattern that could bring some images back?

“You must be tired.” Hoseok said stiffly. “The bedrooms through there.”

While Hyunwoo was exploring the house he no longer knew, Hoseok left to splash his face with cold water in the windowless bathroom. Droplets caught on his eyelashes and the icy temperature was a shock to his system, and yet it didn’t wake him up from the nightmare.

“We got that in Morocco,” Hoseok watched from the door of the bathroom as his husband picked up a cheap plastic heart filled with coloured layers. “We poured the sand together.”

“Oh.”

“That's when you proposed to me in Paris.” Hoseok pointed out the garishly framed picture sat on the dusty shelf. “You paid the restaurant band to play my favourite Vivaldi composition. We had a whole veranda to ourselves. I loved the fairy lights. And then- over here, the picture with the sea? That's' our honeymoon in Greece. We spent half the time sleeping, and the other half trekking old ruins because you’re a history nerd. You kept joking the sea was so blue it hurt your eyes.”

A beat passed. Hyunwoo seemed detached, if a little uncomfortable, looking at all the trinkets that belonged to them. There was a tell-tale hunch of his shoulder that told Hoseok he wanted to be anywhere but there. Despite this, Hoseok found himself searching such a gaze for anything at all that told him he remembered.

Nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Hyungwoo said. There was a pity in his voice - not patronising, just sorrowful. Apologetic for something he couldn’t control.

Hoseok took a deep, shuddering breath. “The doctor said there’s a chance you may regain some of your memories. Not all of them, but some.”

“I hope I do. It looks like I really loved you.”

“You do. I mean- you did.”

Silence. Hyunwoo’s eyes stayed unwavering where they fixed on Hoseok’s vulnerable face, and Hoseok hated it beyond anything. Hyunwoo never stared like that. Hyunwoo giggled and blushed and hid his awkward face behind blundering hands, even after being married for so many years.

The younger man took a deep breath and wiped at his eyes.

“I’ll sleep on the couch tonight. I.. it’s your first night back. You probably want some space,” he said quietly. “We should be up at eight for our - sorry, your consultation with the therapist in the morning. I’ve put your medication on the bedside table for tonight and the morning - the liquid is in the fridge to keep it cold.”

“Thanks.”

Hyunwoo shut the bedroom door behind him.

Hoseok cried on the sofa that night. Stained the pillow with salty tears like the sea of Greece or Morocco or Paris, but no matter how long he sat there with the dark pressing down on him, sleep would not find him. Flashes of that day, that one moment ran through his head like lightning. The impact. The blood. The last moment Hyunwoo had known who he was.

The last moment Hyunwoo had loved him.

_Pumpkin spice warmed Hoseok’s tongue while he sipped from his Starbucks cup. It was autumn when Hyunwoo first asked him out. Late outside, dark enough that even Hoseok would not venture out alone, especially in his checkered pyjamas and fluffy socks._

_Then a knock sounded at the door._

_Hyungwon motioned for him to open it with a lazy hand._

_Hoseok did._

_Hyunwoo stood the other side._

_Just Hyunwoo. Cheeks a little red, eyes a little puffy, a shadow of stubble dusting his chin that was strangely attractive in that ragged, rough demeanour Hoseok liked._

_“Hey,” he said. Unsure. Shifting his own weight on his feet._

_“Hey,” Hoseok replied._

_“I was wondering.. Do you.. Wanna go out? For dinner? Like right now?”_

_The rustle of fabric suggested Hyungwon had just sat up. Hoseok laughed, shy, and folded his arms across his chest. “What.. like, just us?” he teased._

_“Yeah. Just us,” Hyunwoo said._

_“Oh.” Hoseok breathed. The other wasn’t kidding. He was serious._

_His heart skittered. Pulse quickened in his ear and shot through his skull like a hundred tides ebbing at once._

_Hyunwoo scratched at his nose and shifted nervously on his feet. “I can drive. I have a car. We can like.. I dunno. Get chicken nuggets and eat them in my car or something.”_

_“You got that from an Instagram goals post didn’t you?”_

_Hyunwoo laughed. It was one of those freeing sounds Hoseok was beginning to appreciate from the other, one of those truly youthful melodies of joy. It tasted like moonlight and the glitter of stars. It sounded like the exhale of a tired body submerged in a warm bath. It felt like the gentle caress of heat from a candle in one's own relaxation time._

_“I’m not very good at this,” Hyunwoo said sheepishly. The tips of his ears were brighter than they had ever been._

_For a moment, Hoseok looked back at his roommate. Hyungwon’s eyebrows were raised in obvious contempt - looking upon the young lovebirds like a well-endowed dove who had never had to search for a partner in his entire lifetime._

_“Let’s go,” Hoseok said when his roommate rolled his eyes and made a ‘leave’ motion with his hands. He couldn’t look Hyunwoo in his eyes. His bronze face was too tall, too handsome, too perfect._

_They did get chicken nuggets to eat in his car. Hyunwoo's car was - well, what anybody would expect a football player's car to be. A single beer can was crushed on the floor. The colours of his team were draped across the back seat in an old, stained jersey._

_But there were also other things. Uniquely Hyunwoo things. The scented charm that hung from the mirror was a rainbow falling from a cloud. The steering wheel had a word crudely carved into it with what looked like the jagged edge of a key - L O V E._

_Very uniquely Hyunwoo._

_Hyunwoo giggled a lot when they talked. Hoseok thought he liked to pretend he didn’t, by the way he hid his face by dropping it low and pretending to focus on the road. But he did giggle a lot, and his eyes scrunched up to create impossibly small crescent moons, and Hoseok loved every second of it._

_At the end of the night they found themselves walking back to the dorm in silence - Hyunwoo clutching a styrofoam fast food cup and Hoseok with his hands swinging by his sides._

_Maybe hoping the other would hold one of them._

_He didn’t._

_Hyunwoo was looking at him and Hoseok felt his heart shrivel at the sparkle in his eyes._

_Deep down, the doubt bubbled like a kettle left to heat too long, molten rock from his melting heart threatened to spill over his closed mouth and burn whatever was between them into nothing before it could grow to something._

_“I’m not just a, like, one night stand. I don’t want that.” he said quickly. He had to say it. Before this nothing turned into something. Before the other was disappointed._

_“What? Oh, Hoseok, no. No-” Hyunwoo had stumbled in his tracks and dropped his plastic drunk on the concrete floor. An endearing struggle to pick it up ensued before he turned to younger with the most innocent look of panic on his teddy bear face. “Shit, Hoseok. I think you’re so cool and- and way too cool for me. And really handsome. And you have the cutest laugh.”_

_Hoseok’s cheeks grew hot. “Stop.”_

_“I- I like you.” Hyunwoo scratched at his neck. “Is that silly to say, when we’ve known each other a week?”_

_Hoseok giggled. “No. It’s romantic.”_

_“Do you... like romantic?”_

_“I love romantic.”_

_A beat passed. Hyunwoo paused, seemingly considering something in his nervous, jittery mind before he was tugging his hoodie from his large frame and using it to swamp Hoseok._

_It was clumsy and awkward. At first, the sleeves got tangled, and then Hosoek had to wrestle the hems until it fit over his body._

_But it did. Hoseok wore Hyunwoo’s hoodie. It smelt like him. Like warmth and cheap aftershave and the inside of his car. Like pine and cinnamon and a little bit of ash._

_Hoseok was a wide man, but Hyunwoo was long and wide. The sleeves brushed his fingertips and hid his hands under the fabric._

_“That’s.. so cute,” Hyunwoo breathed._

_The tips of his ears were the colour of Hoseok’s flushed cheeks._

_“Goodnight. Thank you.” Hoseok said as they reached his dorm room. The corridor was empty with the silence of night and the spark between their bodies._

_“Goodnight.” Hyunwoo shuffled awkwardly. He did not turn to leave._

_Then, the taller man leant down to place a kiss on Hoseok’s lips. It was the sweetest, lightest thing - so faint it barely happened, but enough to leave Hoseok’s head spinning and spinning until the ceiling was the floor._

_Hoseok was smiling when he waved the older away. His cheeks were bright and teeth on show. It had been such an innocent show of affection - like preschoolers who just learned to hold hands and not two college men on their first venture into the real world_

_Hyunwoo really was perfect, Hoseok giggled to himself that night, as he fell asleep clutching his pillow to his chest. Nobody was more perfect than him._

“How does it make you feel, seeing Hyunwoo in such a state?”

The room they both sat in was stuffy and airless. Too tight to breathe in. The blinds on the window mimicked that of bars over prison, trapping Hoseok's heart in a tight fist and halting all the oxygen that tried to reach his starving lungs.

The therapist was a nice lady. A short bob of grey hair permed around a thin face. Creases lined her lipstick-stained lips and her blue eyeshadow was always slightly off-centre, an endearing trait that reminded Hoseok she was only human.

A trait he needed reminding of when she asked such heartbreaking questions.

“How do you think I feel?” Hoseok said. No malice wove between the short words carved by his tongue. Instead, they were flat and open, his subconscious begging for anybody to disagree with his sadness and challenge how empty he felt.

The therapist did not react to his quip and nodded as if she had discovered something new.

There was nothing new to discover. It had been another week since Hyunwoo had returned home and nothing had changed from that first night - they avoided each other at all opportunities. Hoseok tried every single morning to make the apartment a happy place. He made his husband breakfast, called him on his lunch break, made them eat dinner together on the sofa as they watched all their old favourite movies. But Hyunwoo only did so much as thank him with awkward, withdrawn words. If Hoseok so much as brought up their past, the older would shrivel up into his shell and throw out spikes of hostility.

It made Hoseok cry every night, not having soft, strong arms hold him and lull him to sleep. But he refused to let Hyunwoo see him cry. He refused to be heartbroken over a man that still existed, just could not be seen.

“Well, Hyunwoo,” The lady turned to the older man. “How does it make you feel seeing Hoseok be so defensive?”

“It makes me want to remember.” Hyunwoo said blankly. Reading lines the other had fed him the past week, probably. The sentence left a bitter taste in Hoseok’s mouth.

The therapist clapped her ringed hands together and sat back with a triumphant smile. “Which is good! Which is progress. When we first began, you didn’t want to remember anything. We are moving forward already, how lovely.”

That night, thinking of the therapist's words, Hoseok tried once again to spark conversation with his husband while they sat in silence at the dining table.

“Are you enjoying your dinner?” he asked, attempting to make his face open and inviting but not overbearing or strange.

Hyunwoo nodded. “Yes, thank you.”

Hoseok sighed. The meat tasted bland even to him, the seasoning lost in the midst of his mourning.

Shaking hands held onto every word the older muttered. Latched onto the calming ebb and flow of the voice he found too familiar as if one day it would mean something. As if soon, Hyunwoo would remember. He’d wake up and take Hoseok in his arms and apologise, again and again, for even daring to forget the man he loved most in the world.

But that didn’t happen.

Instead, therapy continued in that dry, airless room, and each morning ran into the other with no concept of time. Therapy was every day for Hyunwoo. Every three days for the both of them. Driving the both of them to and from that forbidding, monotonous building was perhaps the worst part of Hoseok’s day. Neither of them talked and each moment of silence broke Hoseok’s heart a little more.

“Come, Hoseok. Tell us about when you first met.”

Hoseok swallowed the stone in his throat and avoided meeting the intrusive gaze of the therapist. “I’ve told this story a hundred times.”

“Please, tell it once more.”

“We met in a classroom. You spilled your smoothie. I giggled. We connected.”

There was a pause, and then Hyunwoo said, “I thought it was a protein shake.”

If the words had been any more teasing, had come with the tang of mischief or slant of humour, Hoseok would have let himself fall into the easy trap. Would have laughed with his husband and joked that he could not remember such small details when his face had been so handsome and he’d been too shy.

But Hyunwoo was only reciting what he had heard before. Speaking false memories at the trigger of a word. There was no emotion in what he said. No feeling. No connection.

“See!” The therapist shot them both a proud grin. “See, how amazing this is-”

“I’m waiting outside.” Hoseok stood up. His chair scraped across the wooden floor and Hyunwoo flinched.

He didn’t care.

The ground was cold under his thighs when he finally managed to collapse against the wall of the building. Moisture stained the fabric of his trousers as he let his body sink deeper into the pitfalled concrete, melding with the stone until it seemed he himself would never move, forever imprisoned as a statue of ridicule for all those who had lost their love to cruel, cruel fate.

Hoseok cried. It was not big shuddering sobs like he had hoped, but pathetic, hiccuping moans. Tiny wheezes of air that barely made an impression past his chapped lips. Salty tears that seemed impossibly hot despite the cold winter air around them. The sharp frost that gathered in the corners of steps seemed to laugh at him, and the billowing cloud of his breath ran fast from his open mouth until it faded to nothingness. Hoseok wished beyond anything he could do the same. That the gentle breeze would take him apart little by little and scatter him to the wind so he’d never have to feel such heartbreak again.

How could he cope with this much longer? What was he to do?

He had promised to stay with Hyunwoo until death. Through riches and through poverty. Through sickness and health.

But this was a sickness no amount of love could cure. Instead, the love built up in Hoseok’s chest as he yearned for a man who refused to look at him, whose voice used to whisper of his beauty late at night and now barely spoke words to him in awkward dissent.

He would give anything for his Hyunwoo back. Anything at all.

_There was never a start to their relationship, just like Hoseok never assumed there would be an end._

_One moment, they were not together. The next, it was all they had ever known._

_Not in a dependant or a predictable way - in a perfectly healthy, though slightly cliche way, and Hoseok really loved Hyunwoo’s cliches._

_It had been a few months. Spring seemed destined to bloom into a beautiful scene of young love. Each cautious breath was tainted pink with excitement and embarrassment, cold noses scrunched under the fall of snow as gloved hands tugged each other along. Hoseok, curled into an impossibly small ball on the side bench of Hyunwoo’s games, blanket wrapped around his cold frame, cheering for his practicing boyfriend._

_He learnt the names of his teammates over time. Jooheon was his favourite - rough and spunky and a little wild. The boy had kind eyes and cute dimples that eased any intimidation._

_Jooheon liked to tease Hyunwoo for how red he became around Hoseok. Hoseok loved it._

_The daffodils had poked their head through the frosty grass when Hoseok’s birthday came around._

_Tender words hung unspoken between them both as Hyunwoo drove him to his ‘Birthday present’. It was some hotel on the outskirts of their city, a place with red brick roofs and windows carved like the European Renaissance had occurred in urban Korea._

_Their own place for just that night._

_No roommates. No team mates. No distractions._

_Just them._

_They had talked about it, what their first time would be like. Jooheon and the team teased them for always getting it on. Hyungwon inquired after every soft, gentle date about whether anything more had happened._

_Even Hoseok and Hyunwoo had hinted about it, but never more. Never beyond words. It seemed to Hyunwoo that such a time was special to him, perhaps even more so than Hoseok’s own perception of fickle romance._

_The hotel was small and yet comfortable. Probably worth more than their student loan could afford but with Hyunwoo’s sports scholarship, really anything was possible._

_The bed was lit by candles - fake plastic ones that flickered with electricity because Hoseok thought real fire was unsafe. A bundle of roses lay on the bedside table. The curtains were drawn with beautiful lace and the sheets were a satin red._

_“Hyunwoo?” Hoseok breathed. It was beautiful. His heart was in his throat with nerves._

_“You like romantic,” he said. He was blushing. Right from his head to his toes, the red blossoming under his skin around his neck and his eyes averted in embarrassment._

_He was so endearing._

_Hoseok kissed him._

_Quick, and without thinking. Pressed their lips together and thread soft arms around his neck._

_Slow and passionate were two words he would always use to describe Hyunwoo. Whatever the taller did, it was with purpose, with determination. With desire. With an objective._

_Was it a sports thing? Hoseok didn’t know, and he didn’t particularly care, not as Hyunwoo’s hand grasped the soft tissue under his thigh and pulled him so they could crawl onto the bed together._

_They’d talked about this, in moments of true sincerity. When their relationship could be recognised as something other than college sweethearts. As something perhaps a little more serious._

_They’d talked about past experiences. Experimentation. Being young. They’d talked about who would prefer doing what, what makes them comfortable, places they didn’t want the other to touch._

_And yet, when it happened, it seemed as if they had already done it all before. Hoseok had dug nails into Hyunwoo’s arms. Hyunwoo had let out the most blissful breath - one of pure unadulterated pleasure as their legs tightened against each other. Their bodies fit together like missing puzzle pieces, finally slotted into their rightful place._

_“How can I beat this for your birthday?” Hoseok murmured. Breath stuck hot and sticky between their panting mouths. Somewhere along the way, Hoseok had lost his shirt, and Hyunwoo was only in his branded boxers._

_“This is your night,” Hyunwoo said, eyes glazed, pupils blown. “I want to make you feel special.”_

_“You already do.”_

_A smile. Shuffling breath and a cold-like sniff. Sweat on the others brow as Hoseok attempted something new, something foreign. The fold in the other caramel stomach poked with baby hairs and the suppleness of his muscles was concealed under the thick of his skin._

_“Does it hurt?” Hoseok asked, concerned._

_“A little.” Hyunwoo grimaced as Hoseok readjusted, and then his eyes crinkled. “You’re beautiful.”_

_Hoseok giggled. He lost his balance, and they bumped noses while trying to regain some sort of position._

_“You can move, now. If- if you want,” Hyunwoo said._

_And Hoseok did._

_As slow as he wanted. As slow as he could - for he had never had a moment so intimate, so loving and youthful and innocent and full of pure, unbridled trust._

_As slow as he needed, because Hyunwoo would wait for him forever, even with something like this._

Alone was a word Hoseok was becoming very used to at an alarming pace. He was alone when he went to work, alone when he woke on the sofa surrounded by clothes and the takeaway he’d eaten the night before, alone while he waited in the car for Hyunwoo to leave his hospital checkup.

Having left work early, Hoseok found himself alone once again. The tears were hot on his cheeks but there was a tenderness in his shaking hands as he flicked through the scrapbook.

Their scrapbook. Their old one - the one they had kept for three years, after they had met, after they had moved in together. It was filled with cheap polaroids Hoseok had printed online and scrawled, messy writing with the dates and events and feelings.

‘23rd December. Home for Christmas' was a badly lit photo of them at his parents, scruffy dog nestled between their soft frames and plenty of chocolates on the table in front of them. ‘17th June. Final Game’ was a collection of newspaper clippings from Hyunwoo’s last game before he graduated from university. It had been a wild night. Hoseok had got to ride the float right next to him and wave at all the cheering students.

“What’s that?”

Hoseok jumped. The paper crinkled as he struggled to close it, rubbing furiously at his red eyes and sniffing.

Hyunwoo was home from extended group therapy early, it seemed. He had taken to using the bus, sometimes, to make his way there alone. Hoseok tried to pretend it didn’t hurt.

“I.. It’s nothing,” Hoseok rebuffed. He busied himself with straightening his clothes and refused to look the other in the eye.

“Show me,” Hyunwoo said.

And suddenly there was a dip in the sofa next to him. Hoseok felt it drawing him in like the gravity of a thousand planets had just appeared in his mundane apartment.

Hyunwoo, sitting next to him. Leaning over with some interest scattered on his usually awkward face.

“Okay, well. It’s just a scrapbook. We- We made it a few years ago. After college ended.”

Hoseok passed the book off to the other without meeting his gaze. The elder took it in gentle hands, wrinkling the childishly bright coloured paper stuck to the front in clear endearance.

Hoseok did not stop sniffling while Hyunwoo flicked through page after page of their memories together - things he could no longer remember. Memories that only belonged to Hoseok, now.

“We were cute,” Hyunwoo said, a slight tug of his lips twisting into a smile as he looked at a photo of them holding hands on the old football pitch.

And somehow, it was the funniest thing Hoseok had ever heard. He laughed through the tears that dried on his cheeks and Hyunwoo jerked upwards in surprise.

“Why are you laughing?” he asked, perplexed.

“Because... I don’t know.” Hoseok rubbed at his eyes in the hilarity. “My own husband, telling me we were a cute couple. I know. I was there.”

Hyunwoo guffawed. An awkward sound laced with hesitation, but it was the closest to a laugh Hoseok had heard in a while.

The silence was quick to settle upon them once again. Fresh snow against their skin, having been disturbed, for just a moment, by the warm breaths of their subtle conversation.

“I want you to sleep next to me tonight.”

“What?” Hoseok looked up in surprise. His heart jumped over the hurdles of his love in his chest.

Hyunwoo shrugged. He couldn’t meet his gaze. “The.. the other people in my group think it'd be a good idea. I think it’d be a good idea for you too.”

“..Alright,” the younger breathed.

And Hyunwoo smiled.

Just a little. Enough to crinkle the delicate skin around his eyes and draw his eyebrows together, but it was almost too much for Hoseok to cope.

They found themselves alone in the bedroom that night as the moon hung heavy and half-swollen in the sky. Hyunwoo in a shirt and sweatpants, Hoseok in his familiar blue-striped pyjamas. Back when Hyunwoo had remembered his name, he would have teased his husband about his attire. Giggled at how much of an old-nanny his partner was at thirty.

But the old Hyunwoo wouldn’t have worn sweatpants to bed either. For him it was a t-shirt or boxers, anything else was too much.

They clambered into bed awkwardly. Shuffled so as not to touch. Hoseok had forgotten what the pillowy hold of a mattress felt like, or the caress of a soft blanket against his tired limbs. But he could hardly ignore the strangeness of the bed dipping so far away. It was as if Hyunwoo was across an entire ocean. Continents drifted between them, cargo ships of feelings docked against beaches made of broken hearts.

It was just as Hoseok had reached the gentle waves of sleep did the sound pull him from slumber. A sniffle echoed across the dark room. Quiet enough it may have been swallowed by the shadows had Hoseok not become accustomed to the hushed sounds of his husband. He was quick to sit up and flick the bedside lamp on.

Hyunwoo was lying facing the ceiling. There was no comfort in his taught body tucked uncomfortably underneath the pressed covers. Instead, his cheeks were stained with tears that seeped into the pillow behind him.

“I’m sorry.” he said. His bottom lip wobbled and he tried to blink the tears from his eyes. “I tried to make it like it was. I tried really hard. But I just can’t remember anything, and I know it’s my fault and you just want the old me back but I’m not the old me. I’m- I don’t even know who I am.”

Hoseok watched, dumbfounded, as the strong, gentle man he knew as his husband broke down into tears. At first his face crumbled and then the sobs came. Low and built deep from his throat as they shook the blanket he clutched with knuckles stained red and white in fear.

“Oh, Hyunwoo,” Hoseok’s heart broke into a million pieces and he ushered the older man into his arms. Slowly, hesitantly, Hyunwoo hid his face in Hoseok’s shoulder and let his body be held by him. “I’ve got you. It’s okay.”

Hyunwoo’s cries only grew more jagged and clumsy, each word he forced between his lips bubbly and weak. “People keep telling me all these things. That I’m smart. I’m kind. I’m selfless and funny and clumsy and like eating bananas for breakfast and used to play football in high school and cry watching Marley and Me but I don’t know that.” His hot tears stained Hoseok’s pyjamas and his body shook in his arms. “It just feels like- like everybody is pressing me down to be the old me and what if I’m not? What if I’m different?”

Hoseok realised then that he had been so self-absorbed. Had been so absolutely devastated about losing the man he loved he didn’t realise there was still a man there. Still a man who loved and could be loved, but who knew neither of those things. Who knew not who he was or what he was or what he was meant to be.

And it hurt Hoseok’s heart. Rose a wave in his chest that spilled from his eyes in droplets of water and wrapped vines around his withering lungs.

Hoseok let his hand wander to his husband's hair. Let his finger thread comfort through the dark locks and felt the other shudder as the cries ceased.

“I never believed that butterflies in your stomach were real until I met you and suddenly I was filled with them,” Hoseok whispered. Hyunwoo pulled back to look at him - big brown eyes he knew so well, but looked upon him empty and scared.

It hurt, but not because Hyunwoo couldn’t remember. It hurt because Hoseok had to watch him in pain. For his entire life, the only fear that he had kept so vehemently tied to his subconscious was the fear of Hyunwoo hurting. Of the man he loved not being happy.

“I have been by your side through every single up and down,” Hoseok said. His voice broke, slightly, and Hyunwoo’s face stilled when Hoseok took it in his shaking hands. “We weren’t perfect. We’d argue. You’d walk out. I’d refuse to sleep in this bed. But no matter what it was, we got through it.”

“How do I know that?” Hyunwoo breathed. Innocent. Young. Scared.

“Because… because we’ll get through this. If you can trust this stranger for a little bit longer.” Hoseok let his thumb drift across the gentle plains of the others' faces, feeling the divot in his cheek from the scar he got at four years old, or the rise and fall of his bones beneath soft skin. “I haven’t done my best in helping you, but I want you to be honest with me and open with me. If you can do that, I can do whatever you need to make you feel comfortable, and we’ll work through this. Alright?”

Hyunwoo opened his mouth and then closed it. Gaze locked upon Hoseok’s as if it was his only tether to the world around him, and then he said, “Alright.”

Hoseok thinks they fell asleep that night with Hyunwoo in his arms, wiping the tears until sleep took over. But he couldn’t be sure - for when he woke up, the bed was empty and he was alone once again.

_It was the last day of their first year together. Starting with them as strangers whose lives collided in one single lecture hall, ending with them wrapped up in everything the other made them feel. Warmth and happiness and teasing and fun. Lot’s of night drives, chicken nuggets and shared hoodies later, Hoseok was falling a little in love._

_It was as they reminisced about the past year that it slipped past Hoseok’s lips. He hadn’t meant to. Had meant to keep it locked away safe and sound without any access to a key for as long as he could possibly keep such a thing secret._

_Hyungwon was lounging in his cat-like pose, narrowed eyes watching the love birds flit around each other while they helped pack Hoseok’s stuff away for summer._

_“You sure you’re an athlete?” Hoseok teased, giggling, while Hyunwoo panted and attempted to move a box. In his defence, it was packed with Hoseok’s nic-nacs, little trinkets he liked to keep around for good luck, medals from swimming when he was five or ceramic animals gifted by his parents._

_“I can lift you up, can’t I?” Hyunwoo replied._

_And he did. Swung him up into his arms until Hoseok collapsed into a fit of giggles, sweater paws squishing the tallers face and bunching his lips up into a comical kiss shape._

_“I love you,” Hoseok said._

_Hyunwoo froze._

_At first, nausea overwhelmed the younger. The hands holding him above ground tightened inexplicably, and his wide-eyed face tried to rewind the mistake._

_“You love me?” Hyunwoo said. There were more stars in his eyes than there had ever been. A whole constellation - no, galaxy, of stars upon stars upon planets upon stars drawing Hoseok in and keeping him there, suspended between all the things he didn’t know and the one thing he did - that he loved Hyunwoo._

_“I do love you,” Hoseok whispered. Hyunwoo let his feet fall to touch the floor but wrapped arms around his waist. It was warm. Comforting. Face scrunched and cheeks folded in that baby-fat he never quite lost._

_“I love you too. So much. So so much, with all my heart,”_

_“That's sappy.” Hoseok protested, but it was weak, inconsequential. His face burned and he tried to hide in Hyunwoo’s shoulder._

_“I love you. I love you. I love you.” Hyunwoo hugged him impossibly tight and continued to spin him around._

_“Stop it!” Hoseok laughed, embarrassed._

_“Never! Not until I have said it enough!”_

_“Oi, love birds,” Hyungwon’s mellow voice interrupted their moment with its dulcet tones. “This is very sweet, but get outta my room. You can do that in your own apartment.”_

_They both laughed._

_“I love you,” Hyunwoo whispered when he finally set his boyfriend down._

_Hoseok’s heart swelled. “I know,” he said softly. “I love you too.”_

The table was set.

A plate at either side of the four-space dining area. Little bowls of kimchi, rice and ramen billowing steam into the apartment and ghosting the delicious taste of meat and spices on their tongue.

Hoseok and Hyunwoo had decided to have dinner together. Properly.

Hoseok was not enjoying it one bit. The other sat in his dirtied jumper, hair dishevelled and eyes blank, poking at his food while Hoseok watched. A bitter taste rose in his mouth and he chewed blindly at whatever meat he managed to grab.

“So, uh. Tell me about you.” Hyunwoo asked suddenly. His voice was too loud for the tense atmosphere. “Not.. about us. I’m sick of hearing about us - tell me about Hoseok Sohn-Lee.”

Hoseok paused. Hyunwoo - new Hyunwoo - had never asked him such things before. He had avoided learning about his estranged husband like Hoseok could poison him with the words that came from his sorrow-stained lips.

“I’m thirty years old,” he began softly. “I majored in business with a minor in economics - that’s how we met, in that lecture theatre- sorry.” Hoseok cut himself off as he talked about the other. He hadn’t realised how intertwined their lives were. “I Born and raised in Korea. I have a younger brother - you love him, think he’s me but cuter.”

Hoseok paused, then. The words that fell from his lips so easily were soured by the realisation that they all included Hyunwoo. After so many years the younger did not know who he was without the other. He supposed that was why this entire ordeal hurt so much. He hadn’t just lost a husband, but half of himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly and hung his head. “It’s hard, we’ve been together so long. Every part of me is part of you too.”

Hyunwoo nodded. Some tension collected in his hunched shoulders and grip of his chopsticks but his eyes were sympathetic and looked upon Hoseok in pity.

“It’s okay.” Hyunwoo paused for a moment. “Are you a dog or a cat person?”

“Animal person,” Hoseok smiled.

And Hyunwoo smiled back. The most innocent, endearing crinkle of his winged eyes and flush of his apple cheeks, laughing a little at the other. “Alright. Do you like hot weather or cold weather?”

“I like rainy weather. You know - when you can taste the sky on your tongue and listen to the water pour outside as you’re snuggled and warm.” Hyunwoo listened intently as Hoseok motioned with his hands. “But I also like sunshine. I..” Hoseok trailed off. He bit his tongue at what he wanted to say - _‘I like the gold it paints your skin’_ \- and instead murmured, “I like the colours. I like the warmth. It's like a big long hug”

Hoseok looked up from his food to see Hyunwoo staring at him from across the table. Shadows draped themselves prettily over his pensive face and coloured his aura a contemplative grey.

Hyunwoo continued to ask questions - interesting ones about family, difficult ones about the deaths of loved ones, silly ones about favourite colours or subjects at school or playground games when he was a kid. Surprisingly, only a thin blanket of awkward had settled between them. Hoseok found himself giggling occasionally, and Hyunwoo smiled back.

“Let’s get some wine. That’s what people do, right?” Hyunwoo stood up abruptly and made his way to the fridge. Hoseok laughed and wiped his mouth with a napkin.

“Yeah. Though you usually have a beer,” he joked, but felt the smile slide off his face and hit the floor like stone when Hyunwoo came back into view carrying a glazed bottle.

“What?” the elder asked at his forlorn expression.

“I don’t like red wine,” Hoseok forced a smile.

And it was such a small thing. Hyunwoo didn’t notice Hoseok’s faltering face. He just laughed at his own inability to procure the right wine and switched the bottle out for something lighter, more floral, albeit cheaper.

But to Hoseok it was everything - because, no matter what, Hyunwoo remembered the small things. It was one of the characteristics Hoseok loved most about him. About how he’d save the strangest looking chicken nugget to eat last. About how he knew the first line to every episode of the third season of friends. About how he hated red wine, unless it was rose, and then he could drink bucketsful.

But this Hyunwoo didn’t remember that. And Hoseok couldn’t blame him, but he also couldn’t help but be a little sad.

He hid it, however. It was not Hyunwoo’s fault. It was a small trigger - nothing more than a singular miniature detail that catapulted Hoseok headfirst into terrifying reality.

The rest of the evening was not the same - coloured grey by his thinking, and red by the blood of that day which flashed beneath his eyelids as he tried to sleep.

_The next two years they were together, completely irreplaceable, completely happy._

_A shared flat with Hyunwoo’s teammate Jooheon and his younger brother, plenty of essays to keep Hoseok up about European economics, and plenty of home-games that kept them out partying (or in Hyunwoo’s case, cuddling Hoseok) meant the time went by quicker than either of them could say ‘I love you’._

_At first Hoseok had been nervous about living together. Understandably so, when he told his parents he was moving in with his first ever long term boyfriend they had shared a worried look and asked if he knew what he was doing. They were concerned Hyunwoo wasn’t right for him, that they didn't know him, that he would break Hoseok’s heart as school sweethearts never lasted._

_But Hyunwoo was the perfect fit for Hoseok. When Hoseok washed up, Hyunwoo rinsed the suds down the drain - not necessarily to help, but because he knew the younger needed the company. When Hyunwoo took long ice baths after practice to stretch out his aching limbs, Hoseok left his room untidy and ordered his favourite takeaway. When they needed grocery’s, they trusted each other to do it separately. Never dependant. Never needy. Just two wheels on parallel lines who occasionally helped the other shoulder a burden._

_That Chuseok, Hyunwoo visited Hoseok’s parents. He brought gifts in the form of ceramic tea-pots and his father's favourite chocolates._

_That was all the convincing they needed._

_“He’s a handsome young man,” his mother had said - delighted, probably, that Hyunwoo could cook and was helping with the thanksgiving dinner. “He’s kind to you.”_

_“Thanks mum.” Hoseok had shot a glance at his boyfriend. There was a white apron tied around his waist and his brow was furrowed in concentration. Endearing Hyunwoo - the football player who made the best kimchi in the world._

_“Mrs Lee? May you help me with this step, please?”_

_Hoseok’s mother laughed. The sound was not unlike Hoseok’s giggle. “Of course, darling. But call me Hyejin.”_

_Hyunwoo looked up in surprise. Hoseok watched, fond as ever, as the pinkness spread from his neck to his cheeks. “Alright, Mrs- sorry, Hyejin.”_

_And Hoseok decided, right there and then, there was no other man for him than Son Hyunwoo._

Hyunwoo returned to work after four months.

They were a long four months. They dragged on and on with tired feet and threw up cough-inducing dirt behind each step. Hyunwoo and Hoseok were talking, laughing, living together, but there was something so obviously in between them. A wedge had settled itself directly between the pair. Any talk of emotions, of vulnerability, of memories or even the accident was forbidden. They were strangers pretending to be friends.

Work was never something Hyunwoo had never particularly been fond of. For the majority of his life, sport had been the only thing keeping him going. It was pure luck that he had been offered a coaching job shortly after his graduation - now he worked part-time as a football coach and part-time as a student trainer.

Except now he didn’t. He was returning to work, to learn how to work again. He would be shadowing others. They had been very accommodating of his accident. His type of amnesia meant he remembered how to do tasks - how to play, how to multiply, how to write, how to read. The only thing he couldn’t remember was how to love Hoseok.

During the first week of this new chapter of their life, Hoseok decided to leave work early. He grabbed Hyunwoo’s favourite sandwich - the bacon and egg one from the local cafe down the road to his school - and found his way to the reception. The staff was happy to show him to the staff-room, given the circumstance and their knowledge of what had happened. Hoseok tried not to notice the pity-filled look the counter lady shot from behind her stack of papers.

Hoseok gripped the sandwich tight when he made it to the staff room. Pottering around him were various teachers - and there, in the corner, stood Hyunwoo with a drink of water in his hand.

He was talking to someone.

A man. Shorter than Hyunwoo, taller than him. Thin and gangly and lean, with a wrinkled shirt tucked into slacks tight around the thighs, bleached hair falling in waves around a pretty face.

He was laughing. Eyes crinkled in a way so different to Hoseok’s - not in crescent moons but dimpled lines that took the whole of his face with him.

Hyunwoo was looking at him like he used to look at Hoseok.

With love.

Hoseok took a shuddering deep breath and walked up to his husband. “Hey. I brought you a sandwich. It’s your favourite one, from the cafe down the road.”

“..Oh, hey. Thank you,” Hyunwoo took the food with an awkward smile and motioned to the man beside him “Uh, Hoseok, this is Minhyuk. My colleague. Apparently I knew him before.”

Minhyuk laughed at that comment.

Hoseok did not.

Who did this man think he was, laughing at such a horrible accident?

Hoseok left soon after that. He wondered why he had even tried.

“Do you like Minhyuk?”

The words rang out in their small apartment. They sat, eating dinner in almost silence as usual, opposite each other, as far away as their small table would allow.

Hyunwoo looked up from the plate in front of him. “What?”

Hoseok took a deep breath. “I saw the way you looked at him. I haven’t seen your eyes sparkle like that in a long time.”

“Minhyuk… is nice to me.” Hyunwoo said quietly. The sauce on his plate scraped into little lines as he fussed his food with his fork. “After what happened - he... he just treats me like anybody he’s getting to know. Not like he knew me before.”

The words cut deep. Deeper than any tear-stained pillow or awkward encounter. Deep enough to scratch at the shuddering remains of Hoseok’s heart that tried so desperately to keep fighting. His vision throbbed, and he felt everything collapse around him. An earthquake shattering his very existence while time stood still.

“I love you,” he breathed.

He hadn’t said it since the hospital. Since the accident. Once such words had been familiar but now they tasted like lies. Was it a statement or a question? Did the words mean anything, anymore, when the man he loved no longer existed?

“I’m sorry,” Hyunwoo whispered in return. He didn’t look up from his food.

And there was pity in his voice. Genuine, heartfelt pity - because Hyunwoo didn’t feel the same way. Hyunwoo didn’t love him back.

Hoseok slept on the sofa that night. He didn’t even have the energy to cry.

_Hoseok couldn’t remember what their first big fight had been about._

_It was their last year of uni together. The last year of constant study, constant stress, and in Hyunwoo’s case, constant sport and therefore physical exhaustion. It was inevitable that something would happen. That the heat from their fired up bodies would rub the wrong way and set off a spark long left untouched._

_“Oh, so you never have time for me because you don’t want to make time for me. Is that it?” Hoseok was shouting. He didn’t quite know how the volume of their fight had grown so loud. Their words were strained and tense, as if their lungs were not used to emitting such a power, as if they wished to revert back to soft bedside whispers as soon as possible._

_“I can’t take this any more, Hoseok. I can’t!” Hyunwoo was standing on the other side of the kitchen counter. He had been making a protein shake but, as Hoseok watched, he put the glass down out of frustration and ran a hand through his hair._

_“Can’t take what? You’re never serious about anything! It’s like I’m talking to a brick sometimes!”_

_At that, Hyunwoo’s face fell into disbelief. “I can’t give you attention when my brain is fried! I have college, and sport, and work, and family, and-”_

_Hoseok scoffed. “Oh, so your boyfriend isn’t important to you?”_

_“It’s not like that, Hoseok. Don’t be stupid-”_

_“I’m going on a walk.” Hoseok snapped. He slung his coat over one shoulder and angrily stuffed his feet into his tattered shoes. The door slammed behind him and echoed in his head._

_It was later that evening when Hyunwoo called him. Hoseok had been sitting alone in the park near their apartment - a quaint, pretty place even during the misty beginnings of dusk. A place they had walked through many times on the way back from classes, hands linked and smiles painted on their rose-dusted faces._

_“Hey,” The older’s rolling voice sounded from his cell phone._

_“Hey,” Hoseok breathed. The air billowed from his lips in a cloud._

_“I uh.. I brought you chicken nuggets,” Hyunwoo said. Awkward. Unsure. “They’re at home. I can leave them on the table if you don’t want to talk to me.”_

_What typical Hyunwoo. Hoseok found himself smiling despite the situation, so deeply endeared by the actions of his boyfriend. “I’m sorry for being frustrated,” he said eventually. “I didn’t take into account your side of things.”_

_“Don’t apologise, please. I was so caught up in my own stress, I forgot about yours.” There was a pause. Hoseok heard the other sniffle from down the line. ”Can we make up? I miss you already.”_

_“Yes. Please.” Hoseok giggled - a little tearful, a little elated. Oh, how he loved Hyunwoo._

The lights were too bright in the grocery store when the moon had already risen outside and the stars were swallowed by clouds. Too artificial in nature, the pulsing yellow-white of the tiled floor and flickering ceiling lights transported him into another world. Hazy edges coloured Hoseok’s vision as he fell into the land of the slightly unreal, staring blankly at the neon packets of ramen and deodorant and chocolate bars shoved haphazardly on one shelf.

What was he doing there? He couldn’t quite remember. The subtle ache of his heart ebbed with each of his passing breaths and he picked up a canned drink with cold hands. The condensation stung.

Metal echoed against metal as Hoseok placed the can on the payment counter. His mind drifted far away, snaking through the cold Korean streets and into his apartment. He could see Hyunwoo sitting on the couch staring blankly at the blaring television. He could see how he avoided his eyes, how his hunched shoulders threw up clear barriers between him and the younger.

Hoseok understood. He had crossed a boundary and these were the consequences but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. In fact, the sudden distance between him and the familiar man only stung with ten times the venom of before - if only because he was growing used to the others gentle shy laugh and the way his eyes crinkled in a smile once again.

The beep of the machine brought him from his reverie, and he shot the cashier a small smile. It crumbled immediately. There was no foundation for the expression. The support he built his happiness on had slipped away, washed by the rain of his tears. Even so much as a smile was too much and he felt his eyes prick and sting.

“Hey, you good?” The cashier was looking at him in hesitant concern as he bagged his items. He was a young man - terribly bleached hair, American nose and a bar of metal through his right eyebrow.

“What would you do if the person you loved forgot you existed?” Hoseok said.

The cashier blinked. His shrewd eyes took in Hoseok’s professional attire and leant back cautiously. “Like.. amnesia?”

“Yeah.” Hoseok took the plastic bag in his hand and caught the gaze of the stranger. “Like that.”

The cashier thought for a moment. Pensive brows drew together in a frown, and then he offered a nonchalant shrug.

“Let them go,” he said. As if it was the simplest concept in the world. “They’re not the person you love anymore. They have to find themselves again.”

The words didn’t hurt as much as Hoseok thought they would. He needed them, in a cathartic kind of way, to purge the last remnants of hope from his tired body.

If Hyunwoo needed to be let go, then he would let him go. Anything to see him finally happy again.

The apartment was dark when Hoseok finally returned. Takeaway Chinese was strewn on the petite coffee table and Hyunwoo was busy cleaning away his plates.

Hoseok let his gaze follow him for a moment or two while he placed his groceries on the counter. Watched the lean tendons of his neck flex as he moved his arms. Relished in the spark of recognition in the olders eyes when he met his gaze. His heart stuttered at the familiar sight of heart-shaped lips plump and gnawed in the dim light of the apartment they called their own.

And then Hoseok took a deep breath, filled his lungs with the dusty air and taste of leftover food, and spoke.

“Go out with Minhyuk,” he said quietly.

Hyunwoo stilled.

Every muscle in his body grew taught at the words, seizing up as if electricity ran through his very veins.

“What?” the older choked out.

Hoseok felt his eyes sting. He blinked the tears away. “Take him on a date. I saw the way you looked at him.”

“...But what about... us?”

“What us?” Hoseok murmured. The words were carried by the shadows of their apartment and set alight to the tension between them. “What us, Hyunwoo? The only thing I have ever wanted is your happiness, and you’re not- not happy with me.”

The younger's voice broke. The furniture spun around him, lost in the glaze of water coating his eyes and the sudden choking whimper that fell from his shaking lips. Hyunwoo was dumbfounded, watching him break.

“But the therapist says-”

“Fuck what the therapist says. Are you happy, Hyunwoo?” Hoseok looked up. After a moment, the older man shook his head warily. ”See? I.. I’m willing. To let you become your own person again. To find who this Hyunwoo is.” The words ran from his lips like a torrent of rain down the rocky mountainside. “I.. We can go on a break. Like our relationship. Just as we figure everything out. And- you can do what you want and- and I just- want you happy-”

Suddenly, Hoseok was being hugged. Enveloped in strong arms he was so used to, held close enough he could hear the heartbeat of the man he loved.

Hoseok was crying into the other sweatshirt. It smelt like pine and ash and everything he had loved for the past eight years of his life.

He pulled back too suddenly and almost lost his balance. Hyunwoo took him by his shoulders to steady the younger.

This close, Hoseok could count his eyelashes as they clumped with uncried tears. He could see the dimpled pores settled around his nose and cheeks and the subtle shine of grease on his golden skin. He looked just like Hoseok had always remembered.

Perfect.

“Are you sure?” his husband searched his eyes with a sincerity he had not seen in months. Beautiful, wide eyes which could never be mean even if they wanted to.

“Yes.” Hoseok breathed.

“Thank you, Hoseok,” Hyunwoo murmured.

And, for the first time in a long time, he sounded happy.

_Six months after they had finished university, they moved in together for good._

_Into their own place, their own little space to personalise with all the memories of their time together. A small world they could call their own completely and utterly, without the snap-crackle-burn of Lee Jooheon whizzing through the apartment all the time like a firework constantly alight._

_“Hoseok? Can you help me with this box please?”_

_The younger rushed over to take the box by its sides - it was heavy. Probably Hoseok’s prized cutlery collection. If he was going to have a couple's apartment, he needed pretty Tupperware too._

_“What happened to big, strong man Hyunwoo? Where is my knight in shining armour?” Hoseok teased, only to gasp as the box was taken out of his hands and replaced by his boyfriend, leaning down to kiss him on the neck._

_“Your Knight in shining armour has just bought this apartment with you,” he said with a smile._

_Hoseok liked when Hyunwoo was like this. Comfortable with their affection. Bold and a little brash, trailing hot lips down his skin as Hoseok tilted his head backwards._

_“We can’t do this now.” Hoseok said, although the words were feeble and weak. “We- We’re moving in, we have to get everything organised.”_

_“Alright,” Hyunwoo pulled back. His eyes crinkled with his grin and his two front teeth gnawed at his lips in that excited habit he had picked up from the younger. “But we have this place to ourselves tonight. And tomorrow night. And the night after, and-”_

_Hoseok giggled and took Hyunwoo’s flushed face in his hands, giving him a quick peck on the lips. “And we’ll make use of it. Alright? I promise. But first - these boxes won’t unpack themselves.”_

The television was never enough distraction. The pixels of the old sitcom Hoseok watched, curled up on the sofa while he picked at his nails flashed with the fading LEDs of the screen as the laugh track echoed mechanically through the apartment. It sucked him in just enough to block out the world around him, but never enough to fix the moment completely.

“Hoseok?”

The call of his name was small and vulnerable. Echoing from the door to the bedroom, by the hanging photos of his wedding day and holiday in Morocco.

Hyunwoo. Peeking around the door frame with the tips of his ears a violent embarrassed pink.

“Can you help me, please?” he asked softly. The white shirt he wore was untucked and his tie uneven. “I’ve.. never been on a date before. I don’t know how to do this.”

Hoseok smiled softly.

“Of course, Hyunwoo.”

Hoseok draped the maroon suit jacket over the older man's frame. He helped Hyunwoo tuck his dishevelled shirt into his dress pants, and used the old trick of rolling the fabric to reduce the wrinkles. Hyunwoo stood by silently, a nervous jitter in his hands, as Hoseok fussed over his clothes and helped thread the cufflinks through the diamond holes.

“Do I look good?” Hyunwoo asked quietly.

Hoseok’s lips pressed together in a sad smile.

The suit he wore was the one he had worn in Paris. All those years ago when he had proposed. The red-tinged maroon elevated the golden undertones of his skin. He looked like tangible sunlight, in such clothes, and Hoseok could not help but swallow the ache of his heart as it rose, bitter and unwanted.

“You’re the most handsome man alive.” Hoseok replied quietly.

The younger finally straightened his tie. Pulled at the black fabric with shaking hands and tried to steady his breathing with a shuddering breath. Was he doing the right thing? Why did it feel like he was letting himself be torn apart?

“Thank you so much,” Hyunwoo whispered when Hoseok finally stepped away. Worry echoed in his brown eyes but also excitement. A single spark of anticipation, of life. Something the younger had not seen in a very long time.

“Please hold his hand,” Hoseok said. He couldn’t meet Hyunwoo’s eye. “He’ll love that.”

Giddy excitement radiated from the large man as he finally went to leave the apartment. Standing fond by the doorway to their bedroom, Hoseok took the moment to remember that this was Hyunwoo’s first ever date in his memory. The shiver of his soft frame echoed the embarrassment of so many years ago when he had been but a college student and every small smile was a huge act of affection.

“Have the best time. Stay safe.” Hoseok smiled with a wave. “I’ll be sleeping when you get back, but don’t worry. You won’t wake me.”

“Thank you so much, Hoseok. Really.” Hyunwoo’s voice was so light. Happy and carefree, dizzy with the prospect of meeting a man he liked. Caught up entirely in his own little world.

Hoseok watched him shut the door. He listened to the gentle click of the lock behind him.

“I love you,” he said.

The silence of his apartment answered, and Hoseok was left alone.

_Hyunwoo proposed in Paris._

_Hoseok remembered the long flight there. He remembered chasing the sun around the globe with his boyfriend of five years by his side, wondering what it would be like to reach out and let the clouds run through his fingertips._

_He had dreamed. He had wished, upon every star he saw that night flying on the plane, that Hyunwoo might be planning to propose to him. After all, the younger never stopped talking about how his dream was to go to Paris. How his dream was to have a tall, handsome man propose to him in the City of Love._

_And they had a great time in that city. Truly, they did. Occasionally Hoseok felt bad for his partner - did he mind, parading around the cobblestone streets and buying every croissant they saw? Did he mind taking photos of Hoseok in front of the Eiffel tower, or on the merry-go-round, or in the pretty museum by the renaissance paintings?_

_But Hyunwoo reassured him every waking moment that Hoseok was the light of his life. “My muse,” he had said one evening while they drank on the Revoir Boulevard, waving his wine with a silly flourish. “You are.. Everyzing, to me.”_

_Hoseok had giggled at the French accent, and giggled even more when they kissed._

_It hadn’t happened until the last night. The sky was clear in the garden of the restaurant they ate at. Hoseok had gasped, when Hyunwoo had led him through the preened European garden with fairy lights strung in the bushes and tied around the belvedere. In the centre a set table glowed in the orange of fake flickering candles. Delicate lace fell from each side and the chairs were a feathery white._

_Other couples sat around them on cobblestone patios scattered through the garden like lily pads on the calm surface of a pond. It smelt like lavender and rose, and Hoseok could not hold back his giggle as Hyunwoo led him up the steps to the beautiful gazebo and pulled out his chair._

_“This is all very fancy,” Hoseok had whispered. Scared, almost, to disturb the starry night above them or the wine by their plates._

_“You like romantic,” Hyunwoo reasoned._

_And Hoseok did love romantic. The fairy-lights. The gazebo. The beautiful table and cutlery and wine._

_His favourite wine._

_And it was in that moment, sitting across from the other, golden light glittering on his skin as if he was born from the sun itself, with the newly forming crinkles around his eyes and the soft pucker of his lips, that Hoseok realised just how truly, deeply, irrevocably he was in love with Son Hyunwoo._

_“What’s on the menu?” Hoseok asked to break the tension, but Hyunwoo was frowning at something behind him._

_“Hey - can you check back there? I think I dropped something on my way over.”_

_“Oh, of course dear,” Hoseok was quick to stand up and peer over the white fence of the veranda. “What am I looking for again?”_

_No reply came._

_Hoseok turned to ask his boyfriend just what he had dropped in the grass, but Hyunwoo was no longer sitting at the table._

_He was on one knee with a ring box open and waiting._

_“Lee Hoseok,” he began. His hands shook with the nerves._

_“Oh my god,” Hoseok gasped. The words tumbled from his lips without thinking and he covered his mouth with his hands. Around them, the people turned to stare and exclaim and grin._

_“I have loved you since the moment I met you,” the elder said. The ring glinted in its velvet box but Hoseok could not take his eyes off the man on his knees. “And I’m not very good at words. Or objects. I’m very clumsy.” Hoseok laughed but the sound caught in his throat like a sob. He couldn’t believe this was happening. “But I love you, Lee Hoseok. With my everything. I loved you five years ago, and I will love you in fifty years just the same.”_

_“Oh my god.” They were the only words Hoseok knew how to say. Choked up and tight by the feeling of his throat holding back tears, eyes pricking with water so close to spilling over._

_“A lot of- of proposals end with the person saying they don’t know what their life would be like without the other,” Hyunwoo’s voice was quiet. Soft. Only for Hoseok to hear, despite the very public audience. “But I can imagine my life without you - and it sucks. It’s really bad.” Hoseok laughed, and Hyunwoo smiled, shifting on his knees. “Without you, I wouldn’t know who I was. I wouldn’t know kindness, or selflessness, or fun or impulse. I wouldn’t know matching cutlery sets or which shelves house which trinkets.”_

_“Oh my god,” Hoseok giggled. The tears were spilling now, hot and salty down his cheeks, staining his open mouth as he wiped at them._

_“But, most importantly, I wouldn’t know love. Thank you, Lee Hoseok, for teaching me to love myself as I love you.” The elder took a long, slow breath. His firm chest shuddered and, briefly, his eyes flickered shut. Then, Hyunwoo looked up at him, and said, “Will you marry me?”_

_The people around them held their breath. It seemed, for that moment, nobody moved. Not a single soul shifted amongst a glowing ribcage. Not a single word was uttered throughout the world for the entire duration of that moment._

_Hyunwoo shook slightly on his knees. The wind caressed his hair with petals that smelt like roses and fear, the shine of his eyes was determined and scared and so very in love._

_The tips of his ears were pink, just like all those years ago._

_“Yes,” Hoseok breathed._

_Hyunwoo had forgotten to put the ring on Hoseok’s finger in his excitement. The younger had been whisked into a bear hug, spun round and around to the musical sound of their own laughter as the company clapped around them. Again and again, until it seemed they no longer stood on the world but there were the world. Everything orbited around their axis, planted firmly in the ground of love._

_Later, he’d tell Hoseok of how he had to hide the ring box in his cargo pants in airport security - and the staff found it so funny they teased him alone in the questioning chamber._

_“I love you,” Hoseok said, and he said it again and again until the words ran as one river down the mountain their bodies created, pressed tight until they were one._

_Hoseok would love Hyunwoo until the very end of time._

Hyunwoo took Minhyuk out on a second date the next week.

Hoseok tried really, really hard not to care. He told himself that it was for the best, and the therapist said it was them exploring a new type of relationship.

But he knew he was losing Hyunwoo. Not in the same way as the first time, when his memories had seeped into the concrete as his head spilled crimson blood, but in a youthful, heart-wrenching way. He was losing the memory of the man he loved more than the physical being. He was losing his touches and words and love-filled eyes to a man with ash hair and a sunshine smile.

It made him think what had happened between them before was purely chance. A man like Hyunwoo would never date somebody like Hoseok, surely? Especially now he was jaded and old and carried a storm of sadness around on his hunched shoulders.

Hoseok was not a very nice person to be around lately. A black cloud followed his every move. Even the artificial lights of the grocery store at night did nothing to dispel the sorrow that followed him at all moments - although he supposed the sadness was not tangible. It no longer dripped in salty tears down his cheeks or escaped in cries of emotion, but weighed his body down in silent lead. There was nothing left in him. He was mourning a man he saw every day.

Even the thud of him placing his items on the rusting counter did nothing to snap him from his self-pitying daze.

“Hey, exhausted, slightly shaking customer who asks really weird questions. What’s up?”

Hoseok looked up in shock at the cashier. It was the same man as last time - the bleached, pierced, young college student.

“Nothing.” Hoseok deadpanned.

The cashier narrowed his eyes. Clearly, Hoseok had not been convincing. Perhaps it was his lack of intonation, or maybe the bags under his eyes that were now his only permanent accessory in his lack of self-care.

“I finish in five minutes. We can sit in the park. You can tell me all about it.”

Hoseok bristled. Who did this man think he was, intruding on his life?

“I’m fine,” he said roughly and took his bag of items.

“Either you talk to me or I call the cops because, no offence, I’m a little concerned about a dishevelled, mania-experiencing customer right now.” The stranger raised an eyebrow.

Hoseok looked at him in disbelief, but his dark gaze did not give way. He was not kidding.

That was how he found himself outside on the cold, cold night, sat by the side of a stranger who he had only ever met twice.

“I’m Hoseok,” he said, when the silence had blossomed into awkwardness. Beneath his jeans, the moisture of the damp bench they sat on reminded Hoseok he was real. At least there were still some connections he held to the real world. If his breath was billowing in front of his face in the icy air, then surely he couldn’t yet be a ghost?

“Changkyun,” the slim cashier offered him a drink of an alcoholic can he pulled from the inside of the military coat that swamped his small frame. Hoseok shook his head and Changkyun shrugged, turning to look at him. “So. Person you loved, amnesia, etcetera. Explain. Start from the beginning.”

And so Hoseok did. Right from the beginning - from their relationship in college to their proposal in France to the very moment he had seen the scarlet blood stain the concrete below his beloved husband. His words were hushed and pained but they flew from his lips as if finally free. The catharsis of telling this stranger his problems far outweighed the pressing horror that still crushed his fragile heart.

“So you just.. Let him go on a date?” Changkyun turned to stare at him with disbelief on his face. “With another man? After everything you’ve been through”

“Yeah,” Hoseok breathed. The words hurt less hearing them from another person. “I want him to be happy. Clearly I wasn’t making him happy.”

“That’s the single most stupid and selfless thing I’ve ever heard anybody do,” the cashier said. “I don’t know you, Hoseok, but you’re too nice for your own good.”

They were the first kind words Hoseok had heard in a very, very long time.

Every other sharp dig had been a bite at his demeanour, at his sadness, at his fear. Cutting deep into an already fragile self, plucking at his heartstrings by demanding why he wasn’t over it yet or why he didn’t fight for the man he loved.

There was nothing and no one for Hoseok to fight. Only the demons in his head that kept flashing the image of Hyunwoo’s smile in the last moment he felt loved.

Hoseok didn’t realise he was crying until the cashier was fumbling to take him in his spindly arms. “Fuck. Fuck, sorry, shit- I didn’t mean to make you cry-” Changkyun smelt like cigarettes and apple juice and sourdough. He was awkward in his hugs in a way Hyunwoo wasn’t - all sharp edges and oddly placed limbs. “Don’t you have like.. Friends you can talk to about this? To support you?”

“No,” Hoseok laughed. Bitter. He was thirty years old, and he didn’t have any friends besides acquaintances at work. “My life- it was so caught up in him. I forgot who I was.”

The cashier pulled out a wrinkled receipt and scrawled down a number in the darkness. “Here. Call me if you need to remember yourself, even just for a little while”

Hoseok sniffed. “Alright. Thanks Changkyun.”

“Any time, weird customer.”

_There had never been a time more like those cliche book narratives than the hour before Hoseok’s wedding. He heard the narration in his head even as he stood, fixing the fold of his hair as a makeup artist fussed around his blotchy skin, talking about his shaking hands or the wind outside or the way his socks kept curling weirdly inside his pointed shoes._

_“I’m so nervous. What if this is the wrong decision? What if Hyunwoo decides he doesn’t love me anymore?”_

_“The first time you met him, you swore you were going to marry him.”_

_The voice belonged to Hyungwon. Hoseok had sent an invite to his old roommate, more for nostalgia reasons than genuine friendship, but meeting the tall man and his new boyfriend Kihyun had brought back a world of memories from his youth he treasured like gold._

_Hyungwon’s hair was still long, although he wore it in a bob around his slender face, now, and his hipster glasses were silver-framed and round. His boyfriend was the opposite to him - short and sharp with a focussed gaze, observing the flower arrangements and glittering banners with a shrewd eye. But Hoseok watched Kihyun take Hyungwon’s hand and look at him with all the love in the world, like he would burn mountains for his beautiful boyfriend, like he would raze cities to the ground. Hyungwon was somebody who needed furious passion to keep him grounded._

_He wondered how Hyunwoo looked at him. If it was as full of love - though perhaps gentler for the lumbering man. Something more like tender love than furious passion._

_Hoseok gnawed on his lips. “But- but what if something goes wrong- what if-”_

_“He’s the one who proposed, you idiot,” Hyungwon quipped but his face was kind and eyes sparkled in joy. “Go. You’ve so got this. We’ll be right behind you.”_

_And so Hoseok walked the aisle. The fresh scent of fuschia and rose and perfume drifted through the night air - genuine night air, with the stars glittering above the garden laced with lights and candles. A beautiful, romantic scene. The colour theme was white, but Hyunwoo’s suit had golden highlights, and Hoseok’s silver._

_A wedding at night, so when the sun rose it would be on their new life together._

_Hoseok barely remembered walking with the faces he knew all around him. He barely remembered the drifting music stolen away by the wind or the smiles on their many guests._

_All he saw was Hyunwoo waiting at the end of the aisle. Back straight and fingers twisting in nerves, lip bitten and ears bright red._

_When their eyes met, he exhaled. The night air leeched the nerves from his body, and he smiled. So tender and gentle and loving all of Hoseok’s doubts disappeared in that single instant._

_“Do you, Lee Hoseok, take Son Hyunwoo as your husband? In sickness and in health, for richer or for poor. In the darkest of times and the lightest of days?”_

_Hoseok looked at Hyunwoo, and he remembered the day they had first met in that college lecture theatre. How the clumsy, soft man had asked him on a date, how he had been so terribly awkward and endearingly sweet._

_How he had known without knowing that Hyunwoo was the only man for him._

_It really didn’t take much for him to say it._

_“I do.”_

“I kissed him.”

The words were giddy and pitched. Slanted with excitement and coloured by the red cheeks they accompanied. Hyunwoo had just stepped through the door with a scarf wound around his neck after his third date with Minhyuk. He had taken him for dinner, to a fancy place downtown Hoseok had recommended.

He didn’t tell the other that was where they used to eat. The sliver of information seemed irrelevant now.

Not a lot was left in Hoseok for him to feel bitter now. He let himself relish in the happiness of his husband (was that word right, anymore?) and shared a tired smile from where he was curled on the sofa.

“What do you like best about him?” Hoseok asked.

Hyunwoo flushed. “His giggle.”

Hoseok felt it, then, the stab of such terrible feelings. What could he say to those familiar words? How could he express the pain that twisted his stomach into horrible knots as his husband liked the giggle of somebody else? When it had only ever been him, before?

“Hey, Hoseok. I’ve been meaning to say. My colleagues have invited us to the staff dinner next week.” The older scratched at his head awkwardly. “I was thinking - if I bought Minhyuk you could bring a friend too? So it’s not weird.”

“...Alright. Sure, Hyunwoo, I’ll find someone.”

The week passed quickly and it wasn’t long before Hoseok was thrown headfirst into the world of adulthood. Teachers and coaches and staff packed into a singular reception, drinks at the bar and fruity snacks displayed amongst chocolate toppings and sugary mains. Under any other circumstance, Hoseok would have found such an event a nice relaxing time with his husband.

But he wasn’t with his husband. Instead, he milled about the blue carpet with a pathetic cup of water in his hands, watching the man he loved talk to Minhyuk against the bar. The shorter ran a hand through his sandy hair and hit Hyunwoo on the shoulder with a laugh. Hyunwoo looked down at him as he spoke and his eyes sparkled in glee.

“Hey,” the deep voice to his side dragged his attention away from the happy couple.

“Hey Changkyun,” Hoseok replied. The younger looked so out of place at a work function, but Hoseok hadn’t any other idea of who to bring. At least the cashier had seemed excited at the prospect of free food.

A beat passed.

“Wanna step outside for a second and get some fresh air?”

Hoseok nodded and let himself be led away.

How stupid was it, that he still clung to the tiniest bit of hope that Hyunwoo would wake up and remember? It was pathetic and shameful. He needed to move on with his life - it had been half a year - but he didn’t want to. He couldn’t.

Sat outside next to Changkyun, he felt all those emotions come to a head.

“I love him.” he deadpanned. “I hate that I love him. I keep waiting- watching for any sign of him. For him to look at me how he used to. But he doesn’t.”

“Hoseok..”

“Don’t pity me. Please, don’t. That's all anybody does.” He stared at the water cup he clutched in his shaking hands. “I can’t stop loving him but he doesn’t know who I am.”

“He doesn’t know who he is, either,” Changkyun countered, and Hoseok hated how much it made sense.

“He looks happy.”

“He’s so grateful for you, just so you know.” Changkyun said after a pause. “He.. told me. Because you brought me here. He asked me to give you the happiness you give him. He wishes he could be half as strong as you are.”

The fact Hyunwoo did see his effort and appreciated what he was doing did nothing to douse his pain. Could Hoseok live the rest of his life content with the others' happiness at the expense of his own? Was his love that great?

He knew the answer already.

Yes. The answer was yes.

“I’m going home.” Hoseok turned to the younger with a smile. He patted the knee of his black jeans and took a long deep breath. For some reason, the air tasted clearer now. He knew what it was like to breathe. “It was nice spending time with you, Changkyun.”

“Text me when you’re home safe, alright?”

Hoseok tasted the dew on the tip of his tongue. Was this finally acceptance? His heart ached for the man he loved but seeing that man love somebody else was the closest he could get to happiness. He knew old Hyunwoo would scold him for such a selfless gesture. But this wasn’t a gesture for the other. This was for himself. Letting go. Finally attempting to be free. To spread his damaged wings and take flight at risk of his life.

“I will,” he said with a smile, and then turned into the night.

_Greece was where they had decided to have their honeymoon. Hosoek had insisted it was perfect - romantic and pretty, with European cuisine. Hyunwoo had agreed - he couldn’t wait to tour the historical sites and explore Athens under the sun._

_Their residence was a small villa on the edge of a beach. The walls were all white and modern and sleek, but the windows stretched from ceiling to floor and gave the most magnificent view of the setting sun. Hoseok was quick to place his bags by the bedroom door and run to peer out the veranda in awe._

_“This is beautiful,” he said, mesmerised. “I want to explore the ruins! And- and go to all the nice cafes. And can we go swimming? Pretty please?”_

_Hyunwoo laughed, setting down his own bags to take Hoseok in his arms. “Anything for my husband.”_

_Hoseok giggled. “Mr Sohn-Lee. How weird is that? We have the same name.” There was a pause, and Hoseok reached out to touch the older man's lips with his fingertips. They were slightly wet and shone in the golden sun of Greece. “You’re so handsome.”_

_Hyunwoo ducked his head in embarrassment before his hands had found his way under Hoseok’s waist and he was lifting him high in the air. Hoseok was laughing, uncontrollably, happily. This was his husband. His husband grasping him so tight. His husband laying him on the bed with the sappiest, doe-eyed look on his love-bird face._

_They kissed. Hot and heavy, unrestrained. Nothing could hold them back in that moment. They kissed as if the closeness of their bodies would seal the vows of their wedding for good. Lock them deep within themselves so the other would never forget._

_“I love you,” Hoseok said, while their sweaty bodies lay side by side after they had become one. The cool air dusk settled on their glistening skin, and Hyunwoo’s panting beside him lulled him into drowsy happiness._

_“I love you too, Hoseok.” There was a hand on his face pushing back his hair and Hoseok smiled sleepily. “Thank you for giving me my world. For being my world. I know I’ll always love you.”_

_And Hoseok was happy that night when he slept, side by side with the man he could finally call his husband._

It wasn’t as late as Hoseok had expected when he returned home from work the next Tuesday. The stairs up to his apartment seemed dragged out by his exhaustion, and his fingertips still buzzed from the constant tap against his keyboard and the mind-numbing sight of numbers all day. But he had the relief of leaving a few hours early after his boss let him go, and now he was looking forward to the mundane quiet of the apartment. For once he longed to sit in silence next to Hyunwoo and let his mind drift into nothingness.

The familiar sight of his door came into view and he gave a sigh of relief.

The sound was caught, though, and enveloped by a softer whisper. Caught in the spindly fingers of a voice he couldn’t name.

A giggle.

From behind the closed door. In his apartment.

It wasn’t Hyunwoo’s. He knew his husbands laugh as if he had been born with the melody etched in his brain.

Hoseok took a deep breath and entered his home.

The room was lit dimly as if the atmosphere itself was full of the gentle waves of new love. On the sofa Minhyuk was curled against Hyunwoo’s side, his eyes crinkled in a smile and blonde hair wavey around a slim face.

Hyunwoo jumped when he entered, face a mixture of fear and shock. "Hoseok.” He scrambled to retract his arm from the smaller. "You said you wouldn't be home until late tonight."

Hoseok felt nothing.

Absolutely nothing at all. How could he, when he claimed to have let the older go? When he was the one to give him permission to hold Minhyuk’s hand, take him in his arms, look at him with that sparkle in his eye that used to be reserved only for him?

How many times had this happened - Minhyuk and Hyuwnoo, alone in the apartment when Hoseok was gone? The thought of them sneaking around hurt more than seeing them so. He hated the idea of being some parent, some commanding pest who they avoided out of fear or annoyance.

But Hoseok couldn’t blame Hyunwoo for bringing Minhyuk to their apartment. Could never fathom putting the fault on his broad shoulders. Where was the other meant to go, when his life was so entwined with Hoseok without him even asking? The apartment was theirs, the food theirs, the money and furniture and television and bed theirs. Hyunwoo had to make that place his own, too, as he relearnt himself. If that meant using his space with other people, so be it.

But it hurt to see him with Minhyuk so happily fit within the jigsaw of their past life. So casually curled in his jeans and woollen sweatshirt as if he himself was stitched into the seams of their life.

He wasn’t. He would never be.

"My boss let me off early," Hoseok forced a breathless smile and gave a shrug. “I have some errands to run anyway, I’ll just go-”

Hyunwoo stood up. “Hoseok-”

“You two lovebirds have fun, okay? Not too much fun though, I want this apartment neat when I get back.”

He didn’t wait around for their response.

He didn’t know why he called that late at night, but he was strangely relieved when he heard the other's voice echoing down the phone.

“I just... wanted to hear your voice,” he said as an explanation. Even to his own ears, it sounded weak.

There was a snort of sarcastic laughter above the soft mumbling of a sitcom in the background and the man on the phone said, "Come to mine."

Hoseok needed no encouragement.

Changkyun lived in a small apartment. On the first floor of a complex in the student-ridden district of Seoul, furnished with the bare minimum for a millennial just trying to get by. It sort of smelled like day-old pizza and the must of teenage boy.

But it wasn’t home. There was no Hyunwoo treading lightly on glass around Hoseok as if scared to break him more. There was no melodical laughter to slight his broken heart.

When Hoseok explained to the other what had happened and why his eyes were red with unsung tears, the pierced boy frowned.

“You’re too selfless. You need to stop this,” he said. The sofa underneath them both was lumpy with age. It fit Changkyun’s bluntness with an uncanny similarity.

“But-”

“No buts. Think of yourself here, for once. If you can’t deal with them in your home, then say they have to go elsewhere.”

They lapsed into silence. Hoseok shifted quietly in his seat and a strange feeling overcame him as Changkyun’s shoulder brushed against his.

"I'm happy he's happy," he said quietly, after some time. "But I wish he could still be happy with me"

Changkyun didn’t say anything to that. Hoseok supposed there wasn’t really anything to say.

_Hoseok had always believed relationships were like an elastic band. Held tightly within each other's hands, stretched and pulled and manipulated at each turn. Moving at their own pace - towards Hyunwoo when he was in times of need, and Hoseok when he struggled a little too much. And, more often than not, their elastic band was pulled just right._

_But Hoseok remembered the day it had almost snapped. His office job had made him redundant the week prior, and Hyunwoo was on forced leave due to an ankle injury for a month. With no money coming in, their apartment on a new lease, and the stress of the holidays piled upon their head, each was pulling a little too much. Their elastic band was poised to break at any moment._

_“What am I meant to do, Hyunwoo? Beg for my job back?” Hoseok had turned upon his partner with pure frustration fueling his words. ”I’m better than that!”_

_“Neither of us are better than going broke!” Hyunwoo shot back. Hoseok hated when he was like this. Scathing and quick-witted - a Hyunwoo that only appeared in the darkest of times, when the stress was far too much._

_“I hated it there. I’m not going back.” Hoseok said pointedly. His words were sharp and selfish, thrown across the room like daggers. “We’ll just have to be tighter on our spendings the next month before I can find a new job-”_

_“Can you not think about us right now?”_

_“All I ever do is think about us! Every second of every day. Are you saying I don’t put enough into this relationship? Because I put my everything and sometimes it feels like I never get anything back!”_

_Hyunwoo silled._

_There was a moment, then, that Hoseok believed he had pulled too tight. That their delicate relationship had snapped, that everything they had worked towards had dissipated in that one instant._

_“I give you my everything.” Hyunwoo said._

_And it was so quiet. So soft and gentle and tender, words plucked straight from the instrument of his heart and placed for Hoseok to see. The entire vulnerability of the older man on show in his tear-filled eyes and hurt face and hunched shoulders._

_“Yeah? Doesn’t feel like it.” Hoseok couldn’t look at him. His words tasted bitter and bland - he didn’t mean them. But what else was he to say?_

_Hyunwoo closed the door behind him when he walked out. Quietly, so as not to disturb the neighbours. Without the fuss of crying or shouting like Hoseok when the explosive anger overwhelmed him. Still, even in fury, even in heartbreak, Hyunwoo was gentle and kind and fair._

_Hoseok cried alone that night on the sofa they usually shared. Alone for the first time in a very long while. Alone with salty tears and the steady crushing of his heart, the longing for Hyunwoo to take him in his arms welling up inside him like a bubble about to burst. He yearned for the other to return. To walk through the door and let Hoseok apologise and make everything okay once again._

_Hyunwoo did return._

_Not that night, but in the morning. He returned with a bundle of flowers and chicken nuggets._

_“I know we’re almost thirty,” he said, when Hoseok opened the door, still dressed in last night's wrinkled clothes and with eyelashes clumped by tears. “But this is always how we’ve made up, so I figured it’d work this time as well.”_

_Neither of them had the money to pay for flowers or chicken nuggets. But in that moment, it didn’t matter in the slightest._

_Hoseok apologised again and again for being so selfish that night. Hyunwoo apologised, too, for not seeing things from the other perspective. And they talked. Listened. Understood the other’s point of view and worked around the solution because neither of them were perfect, but Hoseok supposed relationships were about the imperfect._

_Hoseok knew he’d love Hyunwoo forever. Even when they were eighty, and big fights like this occurred over the burning of toast or the weather outside. Hoseok would always love Hyunwoo. He hoped Hyunwoo would always love him too._

Hoseok had never thought he would have dinner with his husband's boyfriend.

Then again, he never thought his husband would have a boyfriend. But, now their break was ‘official’ in all aspects of their lives, he supposed it was only inevitable that Hyunwoo would want to date another person.

He would have liked it to be anybody but the high-spirited, annoyingly energetic, man-child that was Lee Minhyuk, but he supposed he couldn’t be picky.

At least Changkyun had agreed to join the three of them. Hoseok had begged for him to come down the phone, voice distorted by metallic speakers as the signal was bad at his workplace. There were only so many amicable smiles and passive hums that he could muster alone. He needed backup to be confronted by such a visceral enemy, and the only man he could call was the bleached cashier with his eyebrow piercing and wise, knowing gaze.

“So, how did you two meet then?” Minhyuk leant forward over his dinner and gave an interested look at Hoseok and Changkyun.

How could he explain the mess that had been their meeting? Hoseok opened his mouth to speak, but the youngest cut him off. “Actually, I was looking for a model for my photography project at college. I saw Hoseok on the street - he had such a handsome, brooding look I just had to ask for a photo.”

“Oh really?” Minhyuk laughed, enthralled by the tale. Hoseok could see why Hyunwoo liked him, with a giggle that melodic and eyes that kind and attentive.

Hoseok felt a kick under the table and started with a gasp. Should he play along with the lie? “Uh- yes? Actually. And- he was so handsome too. Different to what I usually like but-” another kick, this time annoyed, and Hoseok grimaced. “But it just went from there. I’ve been meaning to ask him on an actual date.”

They were lies. He didn’t know where they came from or why he fished for such a reaction. He was just so exhausted at the act of pretending he was alright alone. He wanted somebody by his side, if just to bolster his fragile frame into fighting through the thick of his sadness.

Changkyun caught his gaze. Guilt settled deep into Hoseok’s gut when he saw the glitter of his dark eyes shimmer with hope.

Changkyun liked him.

How could Hoseok not have noticed?

It was then the younger took his hand on the table. Their skin slipped together, a little tacky from the stuffy apartment, a little greasy from the oily food. Changkyun’s hand was a lot smaller than Hoseok was used to holding, and his fingers could envelop his palm like it was but a feather.

A warm feeling pooled in Hoseok’s stomach. Something he had not felt in a while. Something... dangerous, and young and a little overwhelming, sending electric shocks through his veins and offsetting the rhythm of his heart.

“I’d really like that,” Changkyun said with a smile.

After the moment broke, like an hourglass thrown to the ground, Hoseok shook his head and turned back to the rest of the table. He hoped his cheeks were not as red as they felt warm but it was unlikely.

And then, he caught Hyunwoo’s gaze.

Staring at him. Directly, from across the table. Brown eyes boring into the hand Hoseok held with Changkyun, neck growing tighter as the youngest rubbed a thumb over Hoseok’s knuckle.

Hyunwoo stood up abruptly. The table wobbled, and a fork fell to the floor.

“Nunu? Are you okay?” Minhyuk asked, surprised.

“I’m fine. I need a moment.” he said and stormed away.

Changkyun pulled back from Hoseok’s hand and wiped at his mouth with a handkerchief.

“I should go after him,” Minhyuk went to follow Hyunwoo with concern evident on his pretty face.

Nothing compelled Hoseok to do what he did next. It just happened.

“No, I’ll go,” he said roughly, leaving no room for compromise.

“But-”

“Who’s his husband, Minhyuk?”

The words were thrown. Sharp, and without hesitation, straight into the blonde boy’s small frame.

Minhyuk’s eyes widened just a little. Barely enough to convey the hurt that glittered in them, but then he was brushing down his formal wear and sitting back down in confusion.

Hoseok glanced at Changkyun. The young man was looking at the centrepiece of the table as if it were a sculpture by Leonardo da Vinci himself. As if the Gods had crafted their plastic candle-holder with their own divine energy. A worthy distraction.

He found Hyunwoo in his room - their room- the room. The room where they both slept on opposing sides of the bed and did not talk at night. The soft, gentle man was staring at the shelf they had kept together all that time ago. The shelf of their greatest memories - the proposal, the wedding night. Hyunwoo’s last game. Every Christmas together. When their families first met.

“What’s wrong?”

Hyunwoo didn’t answer. A certain type of energy buzzed around his large frame. It distorted the bedroom around him as his fearful gaze caught Hoseok’s stare.

And then he took Hoseok’s face in his hands and kissed him.

Hoseok jerked backwards. His back hit the closed door. His lips stung like a thousand needles had pricked him, like blood poured from his wounds and left him dizzy and weak.

Had that just happened? The pads of his fingers ghosted across his lips and he felt his hand shake in fear.

“What was that?” he asked. The words were sharp and quiet. Dangerously calm.

Hyunwoo was pale and his eyes were wide in terror. The stutter of his lips forced scared words out. “I.. I just wanted to see-”

“Are you serious right now? Is this some kind of joke?” Hoseok felt the anger building, then, like a fire long left to die out. Embers stoked by such an action, lighting a fire in his veins and running through each of his limbs. Pure, unadulterated anger. He looked up at the older man with furious tears pricking his eyes. “You’re really going to play with my heart like this?” he breathed.

“What?” Hyunwoo was dumbfounded at the younger's reaction and worry flashed across his innocent face. “No. No, Hoseok. I’m not playing-”

Hyunwoo reached out to take Hoseok’s hand, but the younger hit it away with a wobbling scowl. “Don’t touch me!” he cried. Hyunwoo’s face crumbled and he stepped forward to explain.

“It hurt me seeing you touch Changkyun. It hurt me and I don’t know why-”

“Oh? It hurt you? It hurt you?” Hoseok’s voice rose at such a statement. How dare the older think he could control who he was with? When Hoseok had watched him find another man, had nursed him back to health, had been with him despite the heartbreak? How dare he not see how much he hurt?

“I’m sorry-” Hyunwoo murmured but Hoseok’s bitter laugh swallowed his words whole.

“No, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I’ve given the impression you have some kind of- of control over me. That you can be with whoever you want but I have to stay sad and angry and in grief every day of my life because of you.”

Hyunwoo was backing away. Small steps for a big man that showed just how much Hoseok’s words hit him hard.

“Hoseok...”

“I watch you with him- with Minhyuk- and I think. That’s not right. It’s not right! You should be laughing with me, and cuddling me, and telling me I’m beautiful.” Hoseok was crying, now, although he didn’t quite know why. “But I put up with it because of you. Because I have always loved you and always will, and if your happiness means being with somebody else then be with somebody else, goddamnit! Just don’t string me along with little bits of affection to keep me caring for you while you do!”

“I’m sorry,” Hyunwoo whispered. Scared and sad and so terribly naive.

Hoseok’s lips stung. The anger fled his body as water put the flames out. It left his chest scorched and lungs smoking, mouth open as he tried to push all the bad air out of his shaking body.

There, in the corner of the room, glinted their cheap sand-filled heart they had both made in Morocco.

_When Hyunwoo’s brother died, Hoseok held him in bed as he cried. Thread his hand through unwashed hair as salty tears stained his best work clothes. Felt the empty heave of his large frame and heard the ugly sobs fall from his mouth._

_He had helped him get ready for the funeral the next week. Had smoothed his wrinkled suit and fixed his black tie. Had held his shaking hand as he stared at the plot of upturned earth in an indifferent sadness. Had spoken for him during condolences, had kept the wine from his aching hands._

_When Hyunwoo got sick, a few months after that, Hoseok had pulled back his hair as he retched over the toilet bowl. He had mopped his brow with a cold towel to break his fever and changed the bedsheets at night when nothing could be controlled._

_Hoseok had seen Hyunwoo at his worst. During anger. During grief. During sickness._

_And still, Hoseok loved Hyunwoo. He would love Hyunwoo until the end of the world. Until Hyunwoo couldn’t even remember his name._

_Because Hyunwoo loved Hoseok back. Inevitably. Unequivocally._

_Infinitely._

Silence.

The sofa Hoseok sat on felt like concrete against his aching muscles. No comfort came from the usually plush pillows or gentle cave of fabric. He was more than aware that Hyunwoo was curled at the opposing end of the seat. Neither of them were talking. Neither of them looked at each other. The air between them was charged with electricity - but not a tense, exciting kind. A scary, prickling kind that made Hoseok scared to break it.

It had been half an hour since the others had left. The table was still set for four.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Hoseok asked. He refused to turn from the blank television in front of him.

Hyunwoo shifted uncomfortably but didn’t say a word.

Hoseok let out a huff of air and stood up. “Fine. Don’t talk to me, whatever. I’m going to bed.”

The older looked up, panicked. “Wait, Hoseok-”

But he did not stop to look. There was too much between them again. It hurt Hoseok to even glance at the other, but the only way his emotions seemed to manifest was anger. As if he had used all his stores for grief and was left with only fury to fuel his existence.

Hoseok had already wrenched his shirt over his head and was looking for his pyjamas when he heard the door to the bedroom shut. He turned, confused, to find Hyunwoo leaning against it. A little scared in his demeanour, but determination shone in his eyes.

“Will you listen to me for a moment? Please?”

Despite everything, Hoseok was still weak for the man he loved. The glaze of his stare and wobble of his bottom lip tugged at what little heartstrings remained intact in his chest, and he nodded.

“I feel this strange warmth in my chest.” Hyunwoo stepped closer, urgent. Hoseok’s gut twisted. “Whenever I look at you. I don’t know what it is, and it hurts. Why does it hurt, Hoseok?”

This wasn’t happening. Not after all this time. Hoseok couldn’t take it - what was his husband saying? Why did he speak so sincerely?

“I’ve spent all this time trying to find out who I am. But who is Hyunwoo without you?” The older man was still talking. Hoseok was shaking his head, backing away, but the other only followed. Desperate. Voice stained with tears. “Who are you, Hoseok? What is the man I fell in love with like?”

Hoseok held up a hand. “Hyunwoo, please- stop-”

“I want to try to see what we were. I know I have been with Minhyuk, and I like him, I really do. But something shifted earlier and suddenly it feels like I can’t breathe whenever you’re around.”

It was too much. Too much, the world was ending around him, he was surfacing for air amidst crashing waves but his lungs refused to let him breathe.

“Please stop,” he whispered. Or was it in his head? He couldn’t tell. Nothing felt real, anymore. Not now.

“I.. Hoseok, I want to hold you and tell you you’re beautiful.”

Hoseok felt himself break, then. The words he had yearned for after so long. The words he had condemned himself to never hear again. He would forever be alone, loving a man who no longer existed, watching him grow old in the arms of another.

“Then hold me.” Hoseok whispered, close to tears.

Hyunwoo did.

Slowly, at first. Cautious and scared. The pads of his fingers shook as they ghosted across Hoseok’s waist and the younger whimpered - it had been so long since anybody had touched him.

Hyunwoo’s hand pressed into his back as it slid round to grasp him. Hoseok daren’t dream that this was actually happening. He was convinced it was an illusion. A hallucination. He had finally been driven crazy by the months of mourning and grief and upset. Hyunwoo wasn’t taking his body in his arms and pressing him against his chest. He couldn’t hear the beat of his heart against his own as they moved closer together. He refused to believe it.

Hoseok was crying. Was this real? He didn’t dare accept it as reality.

“Promise me you mean this. That this is real.” The words on his tongue tasted of everything he had missed. “Even if you’re lying. Lie to me and tell me it’s real.”

Hyunwoo took a shuddering breath. Against the familiar warmth of his chest, Hoseok felt his stomach heave in tandem with the harsh exhale from his mouth. Hyunwoo was crying, too. “I.. It’s real,” he said eventually. “It’s really real, and I’m really scared.”

Hoseok sobbed.

Hyunwoo’s fingertips danced beneath his chin and guided his head upwards.

The youngers stomach dropped and he stepped away. He did not want to be kissed. A hug was enough to break him.

“I need time to think,” he said quietly, through his tears. “You can’t just- this can’t be a thing. Right now. We’ll talk in the morning.”

“Don’t let me sleep alone,” Hyunwoo said as Hoseok turned to leave. And he said it in such a small way, so childlike for a man his age. Vulnerable and feeble, as if awaiting disappointment but hoping for love.

“We’ll talk in the morning,” Hoseok choked out, and shut the door of the bedroom behind him,

_The day it happened had been just like any other day. A spring morning when the air tasted like Sunday and the fresh dew of the night. Fluffy clouds drifted through a mundane blue sky and the trams ran only every hour._

_There had been a kid at the store they shopped in - a quaint cutlery store, since Hoseok really wanted a pretty new teapot to decorate the kitchen with. Every ceramic pot was so detailed, however, he was finding it hard to choose. Hyunwoo was no help, as always._

_“Daddy! You’re home!” Hoseok watched his husband startle as a kid hugged his legs from behind. When his husband turned, the beaming smile on the child's face slipped away into confusion. “Oh. You’re not my dad.”_

_A single mother bustled over and took the hand of her child. “I’m sorry. His father is in the military. You look a lot like him from behind.”_

_“That’s alright. Don’t worry about it,” Hyunwoo laughed awkwardly as he watched the woman take the child away. Giggling between themselves as if the sun manifested in their relationship. Mother and daughter. Parent and child._

_Hyunwoo’s ears were red at such an encounter, but there was a shy smile on his face when he turned to Hoseok. “Dad. I.. I think I like that.”_

_Hoseok’s heart soared. He took Hyunwoo’s hand in his own and squeezed - a moment of solidarity. Of understanding._

_“Me too.”_

_“Let’s talk about this when we’re home.” Hyunwoo said, and then backtracked quickly. “I mean- If you want to. If that’s what- what you meant-”_

_“I love you.” Hoseok said, giggling. They found themselves leaving the store without a new teapot but with new hopes for their future. Not often had they talked about children - the process was complicated and they were busy men - but maybe that day would finally be their turning point._

_“I love you too. Forever and ever and ever!” Hyunwoo lifted the younger up and spun him around._

_“You are thirty years old, mister. No more spinning,” Hoseok giggled and hit his husband on the arm._

_“Fine.” The older man placed him gently on the pavement before a grin took over his face. “You’re it.”_

_Hoseok loved this Hyunwoo especially. His Hyunwoo. The Hyunwoo he had first met - childish and fun and unique, a little shy, but a lot of fun._

_“Come back here!” Hoseok laughed and began running after his husband who was bolting away. Still, they acted like children, like college students. Like they had only met that day._

It was their last therapy session together, the next week.

Hoseok did not know what to think or even how to go about existing, really. Eight months after the accident and it was all coming to an end so quickly. Nothing was fixed, but as far as the system was concerned, they were finished.

“Sometimes it feels as though I have no one to lean on,” Hyunwoo said, having been speaking on his own for the past few minutes. Hoseok had listened only vaguely and caught snippets of brief points about his recent distance from Minhyuk. He hadn’t mentioned what had happened the week before.

Neither had they.

When morning had come, they hadn’t talked. It had eaten away at Hoseok all week.

The therapist narrowed her eyes. “So you’re telling me you don’t think those around you have been supportive?”

“What?” Hyunwoo blinked. Hoseok was suddenly paying attention.

“Well, this might have grown into a bigger problem than just your Amnesia. If you and Hoseok are having problems beyond your memory loss, then obviously there's another issue here.” The woman glanced at Hoseok’s now annoyed face. “Now I’m making assumptions, but some partners feel resentment in these situations. It can lead to maltreatment or anger. I can refer you to some other specialised therapists after we are finished-”

“Are you saying I’ve been purposely hurting Hyunwoo?” Hoseok said incredulously.

“I said I was only making assumptions, but it is not difficult to see there may be an underlying dispute in all of this.”

“I’m leaving,” the younger said suddenly. His chair scraped the ground once again. He would not sit and listen to some old woman accuse him of not taking care of the love of his life when all he had ever done was try to help him.

“Hoseok has been nothing but here for me this entire time,” Hyunwoo said quietly. “As far as I’m aware, he’s the kindest man on this earth. I don’t know where I’d be without him.”

Hoseok paused halfway out the door.

“And I understand that Mr Sohn, but-”

“My name is Sohn-Lee.”

“Alright, Mr Sohn-Lee.” The therapist increasingly sounded as if she knew she had lost control of the situation. “I just wanted to say that your loyal attachment to him may be because you have both been forced into close contact. Perhaps it is healthy for you two to go your separate ways. Maybe it is time to let go.”

Hyunwoo stood up with so much force his chair clattered to the ground behind him.

“Your lipstick looks terrible,” he said blankly, and walked out.

Hoseok looked at the poor lady, frazzled with the speed at which everything had happened.

“He’s not wrong,” the younger said, and shut the door behind him.

“Wait, Hyunwoo!” Hoseok found himself calling as he ran after his husband. It was pouring outside, huge droplets of rain hitting the solid ground and drowning out his words. Hoseok could already feel it soak through his clothes. “Reception says you have to sign off on the system!”

Hyunwoo kept walking. Through the sheets of rain, he looked little more than a grey shadow. “I’m not signing any system that goes out of its way to insult you! You, of all people!”

“Hyunwoo-”

“How did you do it?” the older man turned to him suddenly. They stood alone in the pouring rain, a few feet apart, in the car park of their therapist's building without so much as a coat on. “All those months, alone. How did you do it?”

“I don’t know,” Hoseok whispered. His voice was almost lost to the weather around him and he had to squint to see. “I just… had hope that you’d remember.”

“I don’t remember.”

“I know.”

There was a pause. Hyunwoo’s damp hair stuck to his forehead and dripped rainwater down his handsome face. Anguish sparked deep in his eyes and he shifted his weight to another foot

“I’m sorry,” he said, eventually.

Hoseok almost broke. “Don’t be.”

And then they were kissing.

Hyunwoo had stepped forward and taken Hoseok in his arms without warning. Crashed their lips together beneath the open heavens and pulled him so close their heartbeats became one. Hyunwoo’s arms snaked around his back. Hoseok reached up, up into his hair as the rain hit them hard, but neither of them seemed to care.

Hoseok kissed him back. With every single emotion he had felt over the past eight months. With heartbreak in the movement of his lips and salt in the water that stained his cheeks and anger that of all people this had to happen to him. Sorrow rose and rose until he could barely breathe, encompassing his entire being, and he clutched his husband for support.

Even now, despite everything, the older man was his comfort. His rock in tumultuous waters. The weights tied to his ankles. The strong arms that could hold him at night,

Hoseok started to cry. Horrible, jagged sobs that sucked the air from his lungs and made it impossible to breathe. Hyunwoo comforted him, even as he fell to the puddled ground and collapsed in a heap of sodden clothes. Even as he let eight months of sorrow spill from his body like the contents of a smashed glass.

“It’s alright. I’m here. I’m so sorry,” Hyunwoo was whispering, over and over, a mantra that kept Hoseok’s heart beating.

Hoseok cried into his husband's arms, and wondered if he would ever stop.

_That moment._

_It was like no other. Never in Hoseok’s life had time been so slow and so fast at the same time. Frozen and yet exploding around him while he stood helpless and futile._

_The car came out of nowhere. Moving at such a pace it was illegal, speeding straight towards his husband with no care in the world. A blur of silver and black and the horrible, bone-trembling screech of tired against concrete._

_They had been playing tag just a moment ago._

_And now, tragedy._

_Hoseok remembered blood. He remembered screaming at the angle the car had hit his husband, running through the halted traffic with his husband's name on his lips._

_He remembered collapsing by his husband's side. People around him calling the ambulance,_

_“Somebody help. Please- please!” Hoseok was crying. People around him were trying to reassure him, to take his shaking body and check Hyunwoo for a pulse, but Hoseok could not hear them. Would not hear them in the wake of such a tragedy. Mind completely blank at such a sight. “Hyunwoo- Hyunwoo, no- please wake up. Please- please-”_

_And Hoseok had never felt more heartbreak than holding the unconscious body of his husband in his arms, brushing the blood matted hair back from his forehead, and thinking how he was too beautiful to die._

For whatever reason, post-accident Hyunwoo really enjoyed jazz music.

It was strange, really, as the older man had often preferred slow ballads or generic pop songs to music of any notable genre. But while they sat and ate dinner at their small dining table, Hyunwoo turned up the radio until the gentle hum of the trombone vibrated through the air.

Hyunwoo leant over Hoseok’s shoulder and presented a glass in his hand.

White wine.

Hoseok grinned and turned to kiss him on the cheek. The brightest smile graced Hyunwoo’s face as he poured the drink into a just-cleaned glass,

He leaned in closer and Hoseok held up a hand.

“That’s enough. For now,” he whispered.

Hyunwoo nodded. “Of course.”

They were taking this at his pace. Slowly. Cautiously.

He would not let his heart be broken again. It would take a long time to learn to open up to the man he loved once more.

“Have you spoken to Minhyuk lately?” Hoseok asked, picking at the food on his plate. “Have you told him we are... Trying things again? You looked at him with so much love when you were together.”

“I love him in a friend way, I think. I’m not quite sure yet. I’m still learning love again.” Hyunwoo explained. His eyes were fixated on Hoseok’s every movement and it made the younger blush, like he was a college student again and this was his first crush. “Besides, I think he has a thing for Changkyun.”

Hoseok laughed.

“I love you,” he said suddenly. Hyunwoo paused halfway between a bite. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say it back.”

A beat passed.

“I hope you’ll stay with me long enough until I love you again too,” Hyunwoo said quietly.

“I'm a little used to waiting,” Hoseok smiled.

“I’d like to take you on a date on Friday,” Hyunwoo said nonchalantly, though the younger could tell he was nervous by the crease of his brows and pout of his lips. “I heard there's a really nice restaurant downtown.”

“I’d like that,” Hoseok smiled to himself, watching the man he loved sigh in relief. “I’d really, really like that.”

This was their new beginning.

It had only been a few days since they had shared that kiss in the car park - a kiss full of so much emotion it still left Hoseok reeling - but it had given Hoseok hope. That night he had sat, and they had talked just like they used to, and Hyunwoo had explained that he did not know what love was yet but he felt a connection when they were together. He wanted to explore it. He wanted to learn and let Hoseok guide him.

It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t conventional. But it gave Hoseok hope.

Hope to think that maybe, just maybe, Hyunwoo might learn to love him again after all.

_The hospital was a quiet place._

_Not silent by any means. The heart monitor maintained its sickening beat beneath the echoing sound of distant footsteps. Somebody coughed in the next room over. The sharp sound of a curtain being pulled aside cut through the melancholic air._

_But there was something quiet about the hospital Hoseok sat in. Something that removed all sense of reality from a terrible situation. It coated his lungs in wax and filled his chest with fog while he stared at the man on the bed by his side._

_Hyunwoo._

_Hoseok loved Hyunwoo. Loved him with his everything. More, even, then Romeo loved Juliet, or Jack loved Rose, or any other tragic romance which Hoseok cried over on their sofa most nights snuggled into his husband's arms._

_Hoseok had felt the world end in a heartbeat when he saw the car speed past. A blur of silver and black, the inhuman screech of tires against concrete. The horrible, terrible sight of his husband sprawled by the white lines of the road, unconscious and bleeding._

_That was three days ago._

_Hyunwoo had been asleep for three days. Hoseok had never left his side, waiting, watching, monitoring every move the nurses made. He’d been given a blanket to sleep with and a glass of water every hour. He hadn’t eaten much. He wasn’t hungry._

_Medically induced coma, they said. It was used to help stabilise his brain after the blunt trauma had caused such dangerous swelling. Luckily, the car had not been going fast. It had not hit him directly. He had not been crushed under wheels or flung fifty feet in the air._

_But he had hit his head on the concrete ground and there had been so, so much blood._

_Remnants of the accident echoed in a grotesque scab from his hairline to right eyebrow. A deep graze that bruised a sickly yellow and brown and green, weeping dirty colours into the beautiful pallor of his husband's skin. Hoseok had washed the scab with a handkerchief and made sure to turn his neck so he wouldn’t wake with backaches like he sometimes did, as gentle as the clouds that brushed the sky far above._

_“He should be waking up soon.”_

_The tender voice snapped Hoseok out of his drowsy state. The nurse’s gaze was filled with pity at his dishevelled appearance, but he didn’t care, he couldn’t care._

_Hyunwoo would be waking up soon._

_Relief flooded his limbs; a tsunami of concern rising up and up until only his head was above surface._

_“How soon is soon?” he asked._

_“A few minutes to an hour. We’ve ceased his dosage of Propofol completely,” the nurse explained. “When he does gain consciousness, press that button there. We’ll come check on him.”_

_“Okay,” Hoseok breathed._

_It was as unconvincing as Hoseok felt._

_“He’s fine, Mr Sohn-Lee,” the nurse said softly. “We just had to control the swelling. Right now, he’s the luckiest man alive.”_

_It was then it happened. A soft groan drifted across the air and, heart heavy with realisation, Hoseok turned to see his waking husband._

_“Hyunwoo?” he whispered._

_The beautiful man caught his gaze._

_The nurse hurried off in a flurry of her blue gown. Her words remained where she had left; “Doctor Choi! Patient Sohn-Lee is responsive and conscious-”_

_Hoseok watched with shining eyes as Hyunwoo’s blank face scrunched beneath the harsh lighting. Dreary eyes crusted with the dust of sleep blinked slowly as a newborn child might. He scrambled to take Hyunwoo’s hand as he finally gained consciousness, waiting with bated breath as his husband’s pupils fixed and dilated in focus, like a baby dear who had yet to understand the horrors of the world he had appeared in, who knew not of terror but only contentment and confusion._

_“Oh, Hyunwoo,” Hoseok breathed at the sight of his lover's face. Even with the bruise of his forehead and the drip in his arm, he was the most beautiful man alive. Their wedding rings clinked together as he gripped his hand tighter. “You’re okay, alright? Don’t panic. Just had a silly accident, that's all.”_

_Hyunwoo looked at him._

_“How are you feeling?” Hoseok leaned towards his husband. The nurse returned in a flurry to check his vitals and the doctor's footsteps echoed like the rumble of thunder down the hall. “I can go get you some water- the nurse is here and the doctor is just coming so don’t worry about that.”_

_Hyunwoo blinked. A flickering gaze took in their entwined hands and the hospital around him. No recognition sparked in his chocolate eyes. They were dark and swam with little droplets of fear._

_“Hyunwoo?” Hoseok asked, again, doubt colouring his tone. Was his husband okay? Was this confusion normal?_

_Eventually, Hyunwoo landed his gaze right on Hoseok’s face and spoke._

_“Who are you?”_

**Author's Note:**

> as always, feel free to yell at me in my CC [here](https://curiouscat.me/shinsxoh) and find me on twt [here](https://twitter.com/shinsxoh).  
> thanks for reading <3 stay safe nd wash ur hands


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